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Feedback archive → Feedback 2007
Carbon dating into the future
This week’s feedback is from Franky P of Canada, who has a question about instances of carbon dating giving negative (=future) ages. Andrew Lamb replies.
Hello,
I checked out the Department of Earth Sciences at Brock University and noticed that they offer a radiocarbon dating service. One of their samples BGS-43 was dated 3000 YEARS IN THE FUTURE, more than once.
The website I found it at was earthsciences/includes/c14Form.html. Do a <CTRL> - f and type in the sample code, BGS-43, then look on the farthest right column and you will find this information.
I found this very curious and thought you might as well.
Thank you,
~Franky P
Dear Mr P
Thank you for your email of 6 March, submitted via our website.
I found the entry for the BGS-43 wood sample you referred to in the table at Brock University. The BGS-43 entry records this sample as coming from a large bore hole in Oak Island, Canada. The entry includes the comment ‘The “Calculated Age” is ~ +3000 yrs into the future. Repeated sample and got the same results.’
Testing of atmospheric nuclear bombs in the 1950s and 60s dramatically increased levels of radiocarbon (carbon-14, 14C) in the atmosphere—see the graph below. Measurements have always shown fluctuations in the level of atmospheric radiocarbon, but since the peak in the mid 1960s, the level has been steadily decreasing overall. A carbon age of thousands of years in the future like the one you described could indicate that the wood in question was cut/separated from the tree in the 1960s, when atmospheric radiocarbon levels were at their highest. (There are other phenomena besides nuclear bombs that also affect carbon isotope levels—see later.)
Several examples of future carbon dates appear in some research done on silk cloth.1 In this case fake antique silks were easily distinguished from authentic antique silks by their negative carbon dating ages, ranging from 900 to 1,600 years into the future.
There is evidence of changes in carbon isotope ratios from era to era, region to region, species to species, and even from one part of an individual organism to another part.
Isotope levels can be measured extremely accurately, much more accurately than when carbon-dating methods were first devised. However, this doesn’t mean that carbon-dating is any more reliable. Radioisotope dating relies on unprovable assumptions about the past, and unless we have reliable historical dates for objects, we cannot be certain that their calculated ages are accurate. The only reliable way to date anything is by the historical method—relying on trustworthy records such as the Bible. See Immeasurable Age.
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