Carbon-14 Everywhere It Shouldn't Be = Young Earth
* The 2021 Version of an RSR Classic: Carbon-14 doesn't lie. It has a relatively brief life and yet is plentiful in fossils and diamonds claimed to be millions and billions of years old. Carbon-14 can't be an anomaly, because it's not here and there but it's everywhere it shouldn't be. This radiocarbon is so unstable that a solid ball of 14c the size of the Earth would all decay into nitrogen in less than a million years. Real Science Radio hosts Bob Enyart and Fred Williams begin today's Carbon-14 program by airing Bob's phone conservation from 15 years ago with Jurassic Park film advisor Jack Horner. Bob offered Jack $23,000 to carbon date the soft tissue T. rex that his team had recently excavated. (The 14c argument for a young-earth parallels the argument made from the 50 peer-reviewed scientific papers, listed at bflist.rsr.org, documenting the existence of still-soft dinosaur blood and many other examples of dinosaur biomaterial "fossils".)
* RSR's 2021 Carbon 14 Series: Pt. 1 (today's show), Pt. 2, Pt. 3, Pt. 4, and Pt. 5.
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* 14c Factoids: For a better "gut feel" for the topic...
- Our atmosphere has one carbon-14 atom for every one trillion carbon atoms.
- 21 pounds of 14c are produced in the atmosphere every year!
- Unstable radiocarbon decays with a half-life of 5,730 years. (half-life symbol = t1/2)
- A solid ball of 14c the size of the Earth would all decay into nitrogen in less than a million years.
- A gram of carbon has about 50 sextillion carbon atoms. (50,000,000,000,000,000,000,000)
- RSR co-host Fred has about 10 octillion total atoms in his body. (one octillion of carbon)
- Fred, a big guy, carries around about 50 billion radiocarbon atoms! (50,000,000,000)
- Fred's body experiences about 2,500 decays of 14c to nitrogen every second.
- One 14c atom in a trillion carbon atoms is referred to as 100 percent modern carbon. (100 pMC)
- Likewise, 100 14c atoms in a 100 trillion is referred to as 100 percent modern carbon.
- So 50 14c atoms in a 100 trillion carbon atoms is referred to as 50 percent modern carbon. (50 pMC)
- Fifty percent modern carbon is interpreted as 5,730 years before present. (about 6,000 years BP)
- The best AMS labs accurately count 14c atoms to even 0.001 of a percent modern carbon. (100th to a 1000th pMC)
- Published lab measurements show processing introduces 1/10th to 3/10ths of a percent contamination. (~0.2 pMC)
- So lab contamination adds one 14c atom to 250 in 500 trillion carbon atoms. (Yielding 251 of 500 trillion or 50.2 pMC.)
- 14c "ages" get progressively significantly inflated as with bones from 873 AD dated to 200 years earlier.
- Pompeii, destroyed in 79 AD, was expected to give appropriate ages but gave 2400 to 5800 years BP.
- Old 14c "dates" are progressively too old and there's far too much C-14 in diamonds, etc., to be contamination!


If one little baby ape, a long long time ago, had an especially helpful mutation, how long would it take before all apes inherited that single genetic improvement? Biologist Christopher Rupe (colleague of last week's guest, geneticist John Sanford) helps Real Science Radio get a better understanding of the science of population genetics. Bob Enyart asks Rupe about something called genetic fixation, about alleles, and the percentage of mutations that are beneficial. The discussion also asks, with the distribution of helpful mutations being exceedingly slower than a snail's pace, what is the pace of the accumulation of harmful mutations? Listeners will also learn about the test of the ape-to-man hypothesis, about how dissimilar chimp DNA is from the human genome, and why the Y chromosome should be the most similar but it is so wildly different that it's as close to a chick Y as a chimp Y!





Flashback: In 2016, Enyart with co-host McBurney went at it with World Series MVP Curt Schilling, (who's on Fox this weekend) over Schilling's support for grotestque immorality, at 


