Perhaps you missed this bit:
Since the counting process does not seem to be the source of the "contamination", lets assume that the "contamination" is somehow a characteristic of the sample itself. There are three possibilities for the presence of the C-14 in the sample.
- Source contamination with modern Carbon
- in situ formation of C-14
- Residual activity from the time of burial (resulting from the Global Flood)
Notice that this list does
not include
contamination during the measurement process, which is in fact the exact reason for these radiocarbon dates.
From this link:
RATE's Radiocarbon - Intrinsic or Contamination? we obtain the following important piece of information:
The oldest 14C age equivalents were measured on natural diamonds which exhibited the highest current yields [4]. This important observation provides evidence about the source of the radiocarbon.
If the radiocarbon were intrinsic to the sample, there would be no change in the radiocarbon ratio with sample current. The 14C, 13C, and 12C would change in unison. However, if the radiocarbon were coming from ion source memory or elsewhere in the accelerator, it should give a count rate independent of ion source current. Normalizing the radiocarbon count rate to the ion source current, which is predominantly 12C, would result in higher radiocarbon content for lower source currents, as observed. This data provides clear evidence that at least a significant fraction of the radiocarbon detected by Taylor and Southon in diamond measurements did not come from the diamonds themselves and thus could not be intrinsic radiocarbon.
The lower values for unprocessed diamond and the current-dependent behavior find no explanation in Baumgardners intrinsic radiocarbon model. But these results fit well with the Taylor and Southon evidence that instrument background (specifically ion source memory) is material-dependent, with diamond exhibiting significantly less ion source memory than graphite. The radiocarbon detected in natural, unprocessed diamond measurements seems to be nothing more than instrument background.
Let me just explain in layman terms:
C-14 sticks on the walls of the spectrometer and is re-emitted during measurement; this forms a measurement background that must be subtracted from the reading. The RATE team refused to subtract this background in claiming their C-14 results. But we can't blame them: maybe this whole sticky C-14 thing is a bogus evolutionist cover-up, right?
Enter the evidence shown above. Basically, "current" measures how quickly material is being ejected from the sample onto the measurement device. A higher current means the diamond is spitting more carbon (C-12, C-13 and C-14) in the same amount of time. If the C-14 we were detecting came from the diamond, then we would expect the C-14/C-12 ratio to be the same regardless of source current: you might get 3 C-14 to 30 C-12 instead of 1 C-14 to 10 C-12, but that would still give the same apparent age.
But suppose the diamond were pure C-12, and there was C-14 coming from the instrument. The key here is that the rate at which the instrument leaks C-14 does
not depend on the source current. Suppose that 1 C-14 atom were leaking from the instrument in a certain period of time: it would be that same 1 atom whether the diamond was spewing 10 or 100 C-12 atoms. In that case, one would expect that as the current increases, the apparent age goes down: a lower current would have a ratio of 1 C-14 to 10 C-12, but a higher current would have a ratio of 1 C-14 to 100 C-12.
And that is exactly what we see. Note once again that this result directly contradicts the results we should expect if the C-14 is coming from the diamonds themselves.
