The Non-equilibrium of Carbon 14

Carbon 14 (C¹⁴) is a rather rare, naturally-occurring form of carbon which also happens to be radioactive.  Approximately one atom in a million million (English billion) carbon atoms is C¹⁴, the rest being almost all Carbon 12, the normal form.  Atoms of C¹⁴ are continuously made in the upper atmosphere when ordinary atoms of nitrogen are struck by cosmic rays.  They also 'break down' extremely slowly, reverting to Nitrogen atoms again.

These atoms of C¹⁴ are in everything we eat and drink, and they are incorporated into our bodies in the same proportions as they are in our food.  In normal life we also lose as much carbon as we gain, so the C¹⁴ is always in the same proportion in our bodies as it is in the atmosphere, as near as makes no odds.

But, as I said, this form of carbon is radioactive and slowly breaks down into nitrogen again.  I should emphasise that this is not a problem to us because the level of radioactivity is so low.  However these facts are of considerable use to scientists because in theory it allows them to date things which were alive at one point and have since died.  The reason for this is that when a living thing dies it ceases to take in C¹⁴, and, because the C¹⁴ steadily breaks down, its proportion of the total carbon in an object slowly diminishes over time according to well understood rules.

The rules are, in a nutshell, that if we find only half of the expected C¹⁴ then the object under investigation must have died about 5,500 years ago, if only a quarter then it died about 11,000 years ago, and so-on on a (logarithmic) sliding scale.  Since it is possible to measure the amount of C¹⁴ in almost anything we would appear to have a ready-made method of dating ancient objects, at least up to several thousand years of age.

But one has to feel sorry for the scientists who attempt this, because life is not that simple.  As I said above, the amounts of C¹⁴ taken by living things depend absolutely on the amounts in the environment, in their water and food.  So, to begin with, how can we be sure that the amount of C¹⁴ in the environment today matches that of many years ago?  If C¹⁴ dating is to be accurate and useful we must know what the level actually was at any particular time.  The simple fact is, however, that we can’t be sure of this.  Why not?

Recall my saying that C¹⁴ is made in the upper atmosphere from nitrogen.  This process must have begun at some point, and the amount of C¹⁴ would have started at zero and have slowly risen.  But as it did so there would be a complicating factor – it would also start breaking down.  The effect of this would be that the total amount of C¹⁴ would slowly rise to some level, and then remain at that level, the amounts being produced by cosmic rays equalling the amounts disappearing by radioactivity.  At this point we would say that we had reached 'an equilibrium’ or ‘a steady-state’.

It is rather akin to filling up a old, very leaky bathtub, one with rust holes all over it.  The more one fills such an object the more water will escape, until the amount pouring in is equalled by the amount dribbling out through all the holes.

The point here is that we can actually calculate from various known facts just how much C¹⁴ should be present when it gets to that steady-state, the equilibrium.  What we find at the moment is that the amount of C¹⁴ is nowhere near that point, but is still some 30% short of the mark.  Without going into confusing detail, this means that the atmosphere is less than 16,000 years old, possibly much younger, and if the atmosphere is that young, then, clearly, Evolutionists have a seriously big problem.