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Article Title:	A Diamond Date
Author of reported comment:	Summer Glau
Comment Date:	02:04 on Feb 24 2009
Comment:	Dear Sir, Diamonds are made of pure carbon. They can have whatever kind of C they want! C-12, C-14, etc. They also have a nasty tendency to decay into graphite, but that's another story. Nothing has to "get into" a diamond to give it C-14. Diamonds come from charcoal that is millions of years old, which came from dead organisms. If you knew anything about radioactive decay, you would know that you don't need an entire half-life to pass in order to calculate it. You only need to wait for a few particles to decay, then you can do some relatively simple math to calculate the half-life. We have proven this method to be accurate by using various other substances that have extremely short half-lives (on the order of seconds, hours, etc.) You also seem to be confused about what a half-life is. It is a statistical measure of how long it takes for half of a given amount of a substance to decay. This is how carbon dating works -- we know how much C-14 is in something when it's "new," then we measure how much is in it now. If it's half of the "new" value, one half-life has passed. If it's 1/4 of the "new" value, two half-lives have passed, and so on. For these reasons, Sir, I find your argument fallacious and your conclusion invalid, QED. Please check your facts next time, maybe with a scientist. Articles like this make some people think that religious types are out to cut down anything that disagrees with their previously-held beliefs, and will ignore anything they don't like and just stick with misinformation and ignorance. Yours &c., Summer Glau

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