What is carbon-14-dating and how reliable is it?
|Print This Page| |Send to a Friend| What is carbon-14-dating and how reliable is it? Anything that was once alive or that was produced by a living thing can be dated by using the radiocarbon method of dating. This method, which received widespread attention in connection with the Dead Sea Scrolls, relies on the fact that all living things take in carbon, some of which is very slightly radioactive. But just how reliable is this method? To hear some people tell it, scientists have nearly absolute confidence in the dating methods they use. When their dating methods say that something lived 30,000 years ago, they sound certain. And on the basis of these methods, many scientists announce that the Bible’s record of history is not accurate. But that’s not really how it is when scientists are working in their labs. To understand how the C-14 clock works and what processes are involved, let us consider the egg-timer. By tipping the glass when the egg starts cooking, one learns when three minut
