Radiocarbon Dating Using Radioactivity to Measure the Age of Fossils and Artifacts

Radiocarbon Dating Using Radioactivity to Measure the Age of Fossils and Artifacts 

The Dead Sea Scrolls, like other ancient artifacts, contain a radioactive signature that reveals their age. This signature results from the presence of carbon-14 (which is radioactive) in the environment. Carbon-14 is constantly formed in the upper atmosphere by the neutron bombardment of nitrogen. 

After it forms, carbon-14 decays back to nitrogen by beta emission with a half-Ufe of 5730 years. 

The continuous formation of carbon-14 in the atmosphere and its continuous decay to nitrogen-14 produce a nearly constant equilibrium amount of atmospheric carbon-14. The atmospheric carbon-14 is oxidized to carbon dioxide and incorporated into plants by photosynthesis. The C-14 then makes its way up the food chain and ultimately into all living organisms. As a result, the tissues in all living plants, animals, and humans contain the same ratio of carbon-14 to carbon-12 ( C as that found 

The accuracy of carbon-14 dating can be checked against objects whose ages are known from historical sources. These kinds of comparisons reveal that ages obtained from C-14 dating may deviate from the actual ages by up to about 5%. For a 6000-year-old object, that would result in an error of about 300 years. The reason for the deviations is the variance of atmospheric C-14 levels over time. 

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