Is carbon dating accurate?
Is carbon dating accurate? Only to a certain extent. In order for carbon dating to be accurate, we must know what the ratio of carbon-12 to carbon-14 was in the environment in which our specimen lived during its lifetime. Unfortunately the ratio of carbon-12 to carbon-14 has yet to reach a state of equilibrium in our atmosphere; there is more carbon-14 in the air today than there was thousands of years ago. Furthermore, the ratio is known to fluctuate significantly over relatively short periods of time (e.g. during the industrial revolution more carbon-12 was being produced offsetting the ratio a bit). Carbon dating is somewhat accurate because we are able to determine what the ratio was in the unobservable past to a certain extent. By taking a carboniferous specimen of known age (that is, a specimen which we are able to date with reasonable certainty through some archaeological means), scientists are able to determine what the ratio was during a specimen’s lifetime. They are then able
