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Article Title:	A Diamond Date
Author of reported comment:	NellyFrizzle
Comment Date:	11:20 on Jul 30 2009
Comment:	Carbon Dating is pretty good if you know how to use it. The major problem with carbon dating is that its based on an assumption. Assuming that the amount of C14 and C12 in the atmosphere to be in equilibrium during the time the fossil in question was alive. Now, like summer has kindly noted, you need to know how much C14 you are starting off with in order to make any calculations on its continuing half-life count down. The only way to do this is to take into account the ratio between the stable C12 and C14 and work your way down from there. And we all know now that C12 and C14 are not in equilibrium stats... and they never were, we know what the ratio is now so carbon dating recent stuff is fairly easy... And diamonds being pure carbon dated at the hundred of millions of years should not contain C14. The point is that all C14 should have expired and leave no trace, unless of course they are not in the millions of years age group. The "get into" impossibility means that it can't be contaminated or injected externally with C14. The only C14 in it are the ones present the day the diamond was formed. Which apparently wasn't that long ago... As for potassium, uranium and others of the same family of unstable elements for dating, they are all built on the shoulders of assumptions. Do some research, all dating techniques spring not from a given fact, but an assumption. For example in potassium 40, it is assumed that no calcium or Argon were initially present... another assumption is that the subject was not contaminated by the half-life offspring element...now thats a tall order for something lying around for "millions" of years....

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