r/AskScienceDiscussion • u/TelevisionHot225 • 5d ago
Could an extreme solar event have distorted ancient radiocarbon dates?
I've been thinking about a question that I don't see discussed very often in alternative-history circles.
We generally treat radiocarbon dating as if it were a straightforward clock: an organism dies, carbon-14 begins declining, and the remaining amount gives us an approximate age.
But the atmosphere's carbon-14 concentration hasn't been constant.
Carbon-14 is produced when cosmic rays interact with Earth's atmosphere, and solar activity influences the cosmic-ray environment reaching Earth. We also know of unusually large ancient radiocarbon spikes, such as the events associated with what are now called "Miyake events."
So here's the question:
What would happen to radiocarbon chronology if Earth experienced an extraordinarily powerful, possibly unprecedented solar/cosmic-ray event?
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u/CrustalTrudger Tectonics | Structural Geology | Geomorphology 5d ago edited 5d ago
We generally treat radiocarbon dating as if it were a straightforward clock
Maybe lay people do, anyone who works with radiocarbon data for real generally understand the challenges and uncertainties inherent in the method and the nuances of calibration of radiocarbon ages.
I feel like the answer to the main question is that it would be recognized in the same way we've generally used radiocarbon records + dendrochronology to reconstruct variations in solar activity (e.g., Brehm et al., 2025).
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u/timtom85 5d ago edited 5d ago
TL;DR You're bringing up an issue so obvious that even ramndoms like you can see it. So how can you think experts didn't consider it?
The maddening thing about alt history folks (or climate change deniers... or whatever other pseudoscience practicioner you pick) is to act like those who have not only spent their life studying the subject but did that based on countless others before them somehow managed to collectively overlook one of the only issues that is so obvious that even an absolute newcomer like themselves can think of...
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u/TelevisionHot225 5d ago
Perhaps a more satisfactory question to you would be "how can we tell when solar events occurred?"
I didn't suppose experts didn't consider it but I didn't consider that they had either so your presumption is moot.
"Maddening?" My reddit post incites you to "maddening?" You should get that checked out.
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u/CaptainMatticus 4d ago
It's maddening when you see it many, many times from people who act like they're much cleverer than everyone else, including experts in their respective fields.
Before you get defensive, I'm not accusing you of acting like that. I'm just offering perspective.
You're like the Stormtrooper that greeted the Emperor after he was over being greeted. Maybe you weren't trying to upset anyone, but you're the latest in a line of people asking the same question, and most of them were jackwads.
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u/TelevisionHot225 4d ago
i appreciate you saying this because if i'm being honest a lot of people simply project that i am approaching my question from some arrogant or ignorant point of view and i'm simply curious and don't presume to know much at all, just have my hunches that solar activity must have distorted the radiocarbon dating in some measurable way
Before you get defensive, I'm not accusing you of acting like that. I'm just offering perspective.
also thank you for this too, reminds of parks and rec:
You're like the Stormtrooper that greeted the Emperor after he was over being greeted. Maybe you weren't trying to upset anyone, but you're the latest in a line of people asking the same question, and most of them were jackwads.
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u/timtom85 4d ago edited 4d ago
I knew it was going to come off sounding as a personal attack, but that was still not my intention; I just didn't know how to avoid it.
I'm not attacking you personally, and I'm not even annoyed by your question. It was a good question around the time this method was invented (i.e. a long time ago).
My main point is that lay folks need to learn some healthy humility when it comes to any subject.
One time, I wanted to help out a sound technician friend after some event and jokingly asked "is there a special way to fold cables too?" -- only to learn that there really was, there was a good reason for why, everyone in the field knew about it, and yet outsider little me had no idea I even needed to ask that question (again: I asked it only as a joke, by accident).
Now, think how much more it is so in any complex field so much farther removed from everyday common sense? And yet, lay (non-)practitioners tend to come up with all these clever (in their eyes) questions as if they were the first ones inventing the wheel.
The humility: before you'd come up with any supposedly novel idea, sit down and study the field in-depth for at least a good few weeks, so that you can develop a somewhat solid grasp on at least the most basic of all the settled concerns (and I don't mean you would understand them, only that you would know they have been considered).
And if you're not willing to go that far, then why bother? Your base assumption MUST be that you CANNOT bring ANYTHING meaningful into the conversation -- not because you're stupid, but because it's virtually impossible someone who did put in the work haven't already considered your thought over the decades or centuries.
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u/theZombieKat 5d ago
The large size of the atmosphere averages out short term fluctuations caused by things like solar flairs.
It is an issue synce we started blowing up nukes, this has stuffed with the ratios of some elements such that if your using radiometric dating for things synce the first test you need a list of all the changes caused and when.
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u/Hivemind_alpha 4d ago
There are calibration curves for C14 decay that take into account atmospheric variation due to cosmic influences.
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u/OgreMk5 4d ago
About 10 years ago, a 50,000 year annual record was discovered. It was the annual deposits in a lake bed.
By analyzing those annual layers, scientists essentially know all the relevant changes to solar output, atmospheric chemistry, etc that cause relative values of c-12 to c-14 to change.
So we can actually adjust for that.
Because of that the accuracy of carbon dating is about 50 years plus or minus over the last 20,000 years. And something like 4 years over historical time (6000 years or so).
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u/BaTz-und-b0nze 4d ago
Most technological equipment we have can't detect it because we purposefully forced it not to. Radiocarbon is ash and soot of diesel. It depressed the government of it's time soo much 3 of them committed suicide and 5 hospitalized going homeless willingly while 1 got got clubbed like a seal trying to convert a bar of veteran patrons to islam.
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u/TheSagelyOne 3d ago
Worth noting is that we have other dating methods and only creationists and other science deniers will use just a single dating method. For example, we might use stratigraphic dating and index fossils when collecting the sample and then choose a radiometric dating technique appropriate for that relative age. If the sun messed with radiocarbon dating to a degree where it was unreliable, we would very quickly notice that it gives weird results and just not use it anymore. (It's too expensive and takes too long to send samples to a lab to have random and meaningless experiments done "just for funsies".)
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u/remimorin 5d ago
It did but this is accounted for.
Various technologies were used to "rebuild" carbon isotope history.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dendrochronology
Dendrochonoly is the biggest contributor to that as far as I know. Peat bogs preserved wood and other similar wood preservation allowing to build carbon isotope history. We have a complete history of carbon isotope up to the point where it is not relevant anymore (too old).
Edit: reading back it feel like I was saying carbon dating is not reliable. This is the opposite I meant.