Radiometric Dating Questions and Answers

What is radiocarbon dating? Is it accurate?

• How accurate is Carbon-14 dating?
  (Chapter from the The Creation Answers Book. Deals not only with ¹⁴C dating but also with other forms of radiometric dating)
• Diamonds: a creationist’s best friend: Radiocarbon in diamonds: enemy of billions of years (contains a technical box replying to objections)
• Dating in Conflict (radiocarbon detected in coalified wood allegedly 20 million years old)
• Dating Dilemma: Fossil wood in ‘ancient’ sandstone
• Geological conflict: Young radiocarbon date for ancient fossil woodchallenges fossil dating
• The Dating Game
• The Dating Game (Semi-Technical — True Origins site)

Are there examples of inaccurate results obtained from the potassium/argon dating method (the most cited method)?

• The Cause Of Anomalous Potassium-Argon ‘Ages’ for recent andesite flows at Mt Ngauruhoe, New Zealand, and the Implications for Potassium-Argon ‘Dating’
  (Technical — Research by then-CMI scientist published on ICR site)
• Radioactive ‘dating’ failure: Recent New Zealand lava flows yield ‘ages’ of millions of years
  (popular article based on above technical paper)
• Excess Argon within Mineral Concentrates from the New Dacite Lava Dome at Mt St Helens volcano (Technical)
• Radio-dating in rubble (popular article based on above technical paper)
• The pigs took it all
• How do you date a New Zealand volcano?
• ‘Excess Argon’: The ‘Achilles’ Heel’ of potassium-argon and argon-argon ‘dating’ of volcanic rocks (Semi-Technical, ICR Impact)
• Potassium-Argon and Argon-Argon dating of crystal rocks and the problem of excess argon (Semi-Technical, ICR Impact)

How can the radiometric dates of millions and billions of years old be so wrong?

• The way it really is: little-known facts about radiometric dating (available in Spanish)
• Dating doubt
• Excessively old ‘ages’ For Grand Canyon lava flows (Semi-Technical, ICR Impact)
• Dubious radiogenic Pb behavior places U-Th-Pb mineral dating in doubt
  (Semi-Technical, ICR Impact)
• The Failure of U-Th-Pb ‘Dating’ at Koongarra (Technical)
• The Dating Game (Semi-Technical — True Origins site)
• Flaws in dating the earth as ancient
• Radioactive age estimation methods — Do they prove the earth is billions of years old? (Christian Answers Network)
• Conflicting ‘ages’ of Tertiary basalt and contained fossilised wood, Crinum, Central Queensland, Australia (Technical, PDF)
• Radioactive ‘Dating’ in Conflict! (popular article based on above technical paper)
• Tree ring dating (dendrochronology) [and does it reliably calibrate carbon-14 dating?] (available in Spanish)
• National Geographic magazine joins the dating game
• Is the absence of short-lived radionuclides a problem for the Biblical timescale
  (Semi-Technical, reply to critic)
• (My chemistry prof.) Out of his depth on radioactive dating
  (Letter from supporter, includes reply)
• Evolutionist debater fails to understand young-earth arguments
  (Letter from supporter about a debate opponent, includes refution of opponent)

Is there any evidence that radioactive decay rate might not have been constant?

• RATE group reveals exciting break-through!
• Billion-fold Acceleration of Radioactivity Demonstrated in Laboratory (Semi-Technical)
• Radioactive decay rate depends on chemical environment (Semi-Technical)
• Radioisotopes in the diabase sill (Upper Precambrian) in Bass Rapids, Grand Canyon, Arizona: A application and test of the isochron dating method [technical; discordant isochrons point to differentially accelerated nuclear decay]
• Nuclear decay: evidence for a young world [Helium diffusion rates] (Semi-Technical, ICR Impact)
• Helium diffusion rates support accelerated nuclear decay (Technical, PDF, ICR Impact)
• Russell Humphreys refutes atheistic apostate Kevin Henke’s verbose attack on RATE group helium diffusion paper above (Round 1, Round 2, True Origins site)

What is the current creationist thinking on radiohalos (formerly called ‘pleochroic halos’)?

• The collapse of ‘geologic time’
• New radiohalo find challenges primordial granite claim
• New record of polonium radiohalos, Stone Mountain granite, Georgia (USA)
• Polonium Radiohalos: Still ‘A Very Tiny Mystery’ (Semi-Technical, ICR Impact)
• [Uranium and polonium] Radiohalos: significant and exciting research results (Evidence of accelerated decay during the Flood year, Semi-Technical, ICR Impact)