Doesn't Carbon Dating Prove The Earth Is Old? by John D. Morris,
Ph.D. Perhaps no concept in science is as misunderstood as
"carbon dating." Almost everyone thinks carbon dating speaks of
millions or billions of years. But, carbon dating can't be used
to date either rocks or fossils. It is only useful for once-
living things which still contain carbon, like flesh or bone or
wood. Rocks and fossils, consisting only of inorganic minerals,
cannot be dated by this scheme. Carbon normally occurs as
Carbon-12, but radioactive Carbon-14 may sometimes be formed in
the outer atmosphere as Nitrogen-14 undergoes cosmic ray
bombardment. The resulting C-14 is unstable and decays back to
N-14 with a measured half-life of approximately 5,730 years.
Thus the ratio of stable C-12 to unstable C-14, which is known
in today's open environment, changes over time in an isolated
specimen. Consider the dating of a piece of wood. As long as the
tree lives, it absorbs carbon from the atmosphere in the form of
carbon dioxide, both C-12