[aclug-L] Re: Linux and Creationism...

[bbales <bbales@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

On Thursday 25 April 2002 05:03 pm, you wrote:
> scientists measure the age of the Universe.  Faults such as, "carbon-dating
> is not accurate" (that's right... it's not accurate for more than 5,000
> years or so.  We don't need something accurate to the time-of-death to
> realize a fossil is millions of years old).

Just to set the record straight, carbon-14 dating is a pretty good out to to 
50,000 years.  Carbon-14 has a half-life of about 5300 years.  In one 
"calibration" a few years ago, scientists counted 43,000 annual layers layed 
down in Lake Suigetsu in Japan and compared carbon-14 datings with the count 
of layers.  Carbon-14 dating came out pretty good.

Argon-argon dating uses the half-life of argon-40 which is 1.25 billion years 
to establish dates of from 2000 years ago to millions of years ago.

bruce
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