Can the carbon dating technique be used to determine the age of a diamond

Dating > Can the carbon dating technique be used to determine the age of a diamond

Carbon 14 Diamonds email - May 2011 by Carbon 14 Diamonds Can carbon 14 dating of diamonds prove a young Earth? Your articles on radiometric dating assumptions have been extremely helpful in educating me on this. I mentioned diamonds having detectable C14 as well as coal —I think I got that from creation. An evolutionist said you can easily find diamonds that have no C14, which is then evidence against a 6000 year old earth. The question is, how do I explain that? He takes C14 in diamonds as contamination and lack of C14 in diamonds as evidence against a young earth. How would you explain that? For all I know they all have C14 in them. Why would evolutionists ever look for C14 anyway? Please help if you can! These days, carbon 14 is continuously created as cosmic radiation converts nitrogen 14 into carbon 14 in the atmosphere. The rate at which carbon 14 is produced has reached equilibrium with the rate at which carbon 14 naturally decays back into nitrogen. So, the ratio of carbon 14 to carbon 12 is reasonably constant. The ratio of carbon 14 to carbon 12 in carbon dioxide is the ratio in the atmosphere. Green plants absorb carbon dioxide as long as they are alive. They use it to produce sugars, fats, cellulose and other organic material. When they die, they stop absorbing carbon dioxide. The carbon 14 gradually decays to nitrogen. The longer it has been since the living thing died, the less carbon 14 there is in the plant. The longer the plant has been dead, the lower the ratio of carbon 14 to carbon 12 in it. They get the carbon they need to form tissues and burn as fuel by eating plants. Since they eat plants that are still alive, or have not been dead long enough for their carbon 14 to decay, the carbon ratio in the bodies of living animals is the same as the carbon ratio in the plants they ate, which is the same as the ratio of carbon 14 to carbon 12 in the atmosphere. When the animal dies, its carbon 14 decays without being replaced. So, the ratio of carbon 14 to carbon 12 in an animal depends upon how long it has been dead, just like a plant. All of this has nothing to do with diamonds because diamonds were never alive, and therefore never ate or breathed carbon 14. Nobody really knows what created diamonds in the first place. Presumably, carbon atoms were pressed together under high pressure to make it crystallize. That's how artificial diamonds are made.

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