Diamonds have nitrogen inclusions, so it is entirely possible. As mentioned by others, the 14C detected in diamonds is so low that it can easily be explained by noise and contamination from previous runs.
The one important distinction you are missing is the difference between 14C in diamonds and 14C detected by the equipment. Any scientist working in the lab is always mindful of noise, contamination inherent in the protocol, and analytical error. 99.999% of scientific protocols suffer from one of these problems, and usually all three. If you turn up the sensitivity on nearly any piece of equipment you will get false positives. If I turn up the PMTâs on a confocal microscope I can make fluorescence appear in the sample, even if there isnât any. Due to your lack of lab experience, you may not have an appreciation for the very sketchy claims you are making.
Mass spectrometers have noise, just like nearly all other scientific equipment. Also, 14C from previous samples can hang out in the sample chamber and contaminate subsequent samples. Any measurements that are close the detection limit of a methodology should come with a massive grain of salt.
Iâve looked at how they try to determine something is radio-carbon free material, and thatâs why they (non-creationists) used diamonds as a supposed blank and then Ceylon carbon. They just make an assumption itâs blank. Where are they going to get a blank Carbon source unless they actually use something like a Accelerator to actually filter out C14 and make a blank?
I saw those papers that proposed diamonds as a starting blank, then Ceylon graphite. Iâve yet to see one where they synthesize a blank by accelator type filtering. Those would be REALLY blank.
One of the more impressive correlations is between radiometric dating and the movement of tectonic plates. One such case is the correlation between the radiometric dates for the Hawaiian islands/Emperor seamounts and the movement of the Pacific plate. These islands were created as the Pacific plate moved over the relatively motionless mantle plume that is currently the source of volcanic activity on the big island of Hawaii (i.e. Kilauea). You can see the chain quite clearly on a map:
The K/Ar age of various seamounts and islands has been determined, and we can graph them in relation to their distance Kilauea. As we would expect, we get a nearly straight line:
Even better, the line of best fit gives us the predicted speed of plate movement at 8.6 +/- 0.2 cm/yr. The actual speed measured by GPS is around 8.4 cm/yr which was done well after the radiometric dates were published.
If radiometric dating doesnât work, then how in the world was K/Ar dating able to accurately predict what GPS data would show many decades later? How can YECâs explain this data?
You are going down a rabbit hole here. What matters is that in that particular diamond analysis the measured amounts were less than the blank used by that lab. This means that the dates are invalid by definition, whether you like it or not.
Sure, go and make a better blank, and perhaps you will get higher valid dates. Iâm not sure why a YEC would want to do that, though
As I said, it is not a wise suggestion for a YEC to make. If there was a blank that was really blank and if the apparatus was perfect, you wouldnât get any results for C14 dating of diamond or (most) coals at all, and the claim that radiocarbon dating contradicts an old Earth would shown to be wrong.
As it stands, the whole story hinges on confusing the blank results with real dates. I donât believe for a moment that the lab didnât flag the spurious measurements to the client. Why the client then didnât mention any of this on their website - wellâŚ
This simply amounts to an admission that contamination can not be ruled out.
Since contamination is a legitimate source of error, and legitimate and plausible explanations have been presented that can account for it, you bear the burden of proof in ruling those explanations out. Especially since you are trying to cite the carbon-14 levels as evidence for radical new scientific conclusions that are otherwise contradicted by every other line of evidence imaginable.
AIG offers this explanation, and Thereâs a lot here to digest:
What role might the Genesis Flood have played in the amount of carbon? The Flood would have buried large amounts of carbon from living organisms (plant and animal) to form todayâs fossil fuels (coal, oil, etc.). The amount of fossil fuels indicates there must have been a vastly larger quantity of vegetation in existence prior to the Flood than exists today. This means that the biosphere just prior to the Flood might have had 500 times more carbon in living organisms than today. This would further dilute the amount of 14C and cause the 14C/12C ratio to be much smaller than today
If that were the case, and this C-14 were distributed uniformly throughout the biosphere, and the total amount of biosphere C were, for example, 500 times that of todayâs world, the resulting C-14/C-12 ratio would be 1/500 of todayâs level. . . .7
When the Flood is taken into account along with the decay of the magnetic field, it is reasonable to believe that the assumption of equilibrium is a false assumption.
Because of this false assumption, any age estimates using 14C prior to the Flood will give much older dates than the true age. Pre-Flood material would be dated at perhaps ten times the true age.
Even IF the Earth had 500 times(!) the amount of C in the biosphere, thereâs still a problem with the YEC timeline. Five thousand years between Adam and the Flood is still too long â a 1000x more C would be more like it (roughly 2000 years) Iâd like to see the model of Earth that could hold such an incredible amount
Sal, do you agree with the AIG explanation? If not, what is yours?
But wouldnât that all come from the atmosphere? In order to dilute the C14, youâd need to have the atmosphere to have a low C14 concentration relative to C12 and C13. Since C14 production depends on the amount of nitrogen, youâd have to have lots more CO2, about 500 times the modern value. That gives an atmosphere thatâs 20% CO2. Maybe some plants could survive that, but I doubt any animals could.
Lots of problems with the enormous quantity of C pre-Flood. My point is that if youâre going to invent scientific histories to explain a literal Biblical interpretation, then it should at least align with Biblical history. If it canât even do that, then what is the point of this hypothetical exercise?
