3205: Carbon Dating

Carbon Dating

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Title text: This dating is corroborated by the presence of stone tools at the site, rather than earlier and less effective helium ones.

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Explanation

This is one of 62 incomplete explanations: This page was created recently by a WOODEN PICKAXE. Don't remove this notice too soon. If you can fix this issue, edit the page!

Carbon dating is a method for determining the age of an object containing organic material by using the properties of radiocarbon, a radioactive isotope of carbon. This method is commonly used by archeologists and is invaluable in terms of predicting the time an piece of organic matter came from, like fossils. The punchline of this omic stems from the fact that carbon in the universe was created in the first round of stars fusing elements, and thus a cosmologist's only conclusion from the presence of carbon in a skeleton is "this skeleton is less than 13.6 billion years old", which is not useful information for judging artifacts found on Earth (a planet which is less than 5 billion years old).

Carbon dating or radio carbon dating is is method used by archeologists to determine the age of an organic object. The method uses the fact that carbon consumed by livin organisms contains a fixed ratio of the carbon isotopes C12, C13, and C14. Since C14 is radioactive, it decays over time. By checking how much C14 is left in the leftover of an organism, archeologists can determine how long ago the organism consumed carbon and thus how long ago it lived.

First carbon was created roughly 13.6 billion years ago in supernova explosions of the very first stars. Thus, astronomers can determine that any specimen they find that contains carbon must be younger than 13.6 billion years. Compared to the accuracy of radio carbon dating, can determine the age of an organic object younger than 50000 years within centuries of accuracy, this is highly unspecific.

In the very beginning of the universe, as part of the primordial nucleosynthesis, only hydrogen, helium, and a very small amount of lithium was created. All other elements firts occurred in stars and thus are also less than 13.6 billion years old.

Transcript

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[Ponytail, standing, is pointing at a blackboard containing a drawing of a skull and some bones/bone fragments, as well as a graph and some lines of text. She is speaking to Cueball and Megan, who are standing beside her.]

Ponytail: The high carbon content of the skeleton indicates that the individual lived less than 13.6 billion years ago, after the first round of stellar nucleosynthesis.

[Caption below the panel:]

Cosmologist carbon dating

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Discussion

F10st p0st! 185.36.194.156 04:45, 10 February 2026 (UTC)

First explanation! Hopefully it's fine... (also, nice TCMP reference.)--Utdtutyabthsc (talk) 06:00, 10 February 2026 (UTC)

Oh, was that a deliberate reference? Why isn't it spelled the same way? What does "F10st" even mean? Elizium23 (talk) 06:58, 10 February 2026 (UTC)

Semi-deliberate, but more spirit of the law than letter of the law since early internet trolling is (was?) a common theme here anyways lol; the 0 was a typo 185.36.194.156 10:04, 10 February 2026 (UTC)

It is though getting a little tiresome and repeatable that someone has begun writing first post on all talk pages... Please stop it ;-) --Kynde (talk) 13:19, 10 February 2026 (UTC)

31Gth!!! 82.13.184.33 14:54, 10 February 2026 (UTC)

I'm all for carbon dating, but I wouldn't want one to marry my sister. 24.123.140.66 13:52, 10 February 2026 (UTC)

Is the skeleton being studied a cosmologist? 2605:A601:80AF:4000:2A74:9789:42F0:2275 14:35, 10 February 2026 (UTC)
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