(#4545) Carbon dating

      So there is the normal carbon in our environment that is stable at 6 protons and 6 neutrons, known as Carbon-12. Then there is another isotope of carbon that has 6 protons and 8 neutrons, also known as Carbon-14. Now Carbon -14 is not a stable isotope and has a half life of 5,730 years, plus or minus, 40 years. Now carbon-14 is created out of nitrogen in our atmosphere that is bombarded with cosmic rays. So carbon-14 is continually being formed. As we are taught from an early age, plants need carbon to survive so as they intake both carbon-12 and carbon-14, these are passed along through the food chain to all we animals and other organisms.
     Now given this progression, when an organism dies, the carbon 12 within the organism stays the same since as it is the stable form of carbon. However, the carbon-14 within and organism does not stay the same once an organism dies. It begins to decay at the aforementioned rate. All organisms have the same ratio of carbon-12 to carbon-14 at death so a calculation about how long an organism has been dead can be reasonably concluded. The formula if you are interested is t = [ ln (Nf/No) / (-0.693) ] x t1/2. Through this we can find out the ratio of carbon-12 to carbon-14 that is left in an organism and then determine the fairly certain age of the dead organism.
     There are other forms of dating using different radioisotopes to find the age of things such as the following, "Potassium-40 is another radioactive element naturally found in your body and has a half-life of 1.3 billion years. Other useful radioisotopes for radioactive dating include Uranium -235 (half-life = 704 million years), Uranium -238 (half-life = 4.5 billion years), Thorium-232 (half-life = 14 billion years) and Rubidium-87 (half-life = 49 billion years).+-https://science.howstuffworks.com/environmental/earth/geology/carbon-14.htm. All of this to show that just using chemistry and math we can date the age of things with a high degree of certainty. Science has amazing discoveries and has enthralled most of us with it's accuracy and constant additions. To not trust science is to live in a world where there are no knowns that can be used to evolve.