101 Amazing Facts About Earth

How do "we" know the starting level of something that no longer exists today? Something that's been dead for hundreds or thousands of years?

And by your thinking it sounds like it's okay to believe carbon dating as long as the age is less than a few thousand years, but it's totally useless if its anymore than that. :s Doesn't sound very ... concrete to me. :shrug:
 
noooo it can be any age it will still have carbon 14 in it. The half life is the amount of time it takes for half the current amount of radiation to diminish to half its level. Radiation never disappears it just reduces in intesity. We know the starting levels of carbon 14 from newly formed C14 and know how long it takes for it to halve so we just count how many half lives its been through. We then know that the object formed within the first half life as that is about 15,000 years or so I remember. So if something died say 128 million years ago thats 8533.33 half lives that it has been through. We just calculate that using sensitive sensors to measure the current levels, work out how long it would take to get to that level and badabing you have an age for the object
 
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