Ok... I want to do a little on probability - I could be wasting my time here - as creationists will be creationists, so I am preaching already to the converted. But, if just one creationist reads this, I can link them to where I got my sources:
Source 1: Amount of carbon on earth (in total, by mass) is 0.003% of Earth's total mass -
Reasons To Believe : Planet Formation: Problems with Water, Carbon, and Air (just to prove I am not anti creationists, I took this figure direct from Dr Hugh Ross, who, seems to be a happy creationist. Here's a Dr Hugh Ross profile for you creationists so you know I am not lying.
Reasons To Believe : About : Who We Are : Hugh Ross
Source 2: Total mass of Earth 5.9736 x 10^24 kg (
Earth Fact Sheet ) (I have no reason to disbelieve NASA).
Therefore the total mass of Carbon on Earth is 0.003% * 5.9736 x 10^24 kg = 179,208,000,000,000,000,000 kg of carbon (that is 1.79 x 10^20 kg).
That's quite a lot! (Earth is really heavy... Wonder what Jupiter would be like?)
Before you go blowing me up and saying I have way too much time on my hands - how are you spending your Sunday? It's raining here (not flooding like the Sunshine Coast), my GF is back in Australia till April, my dog is asleep and I am trying to work out how much carbon there is in the world to see what the probability of 1 atom of C-14 spontaneously decaying to N-14.
My science might not be perfect, because I've only had a couple of hours to find this out. If I had a lifetime I'd probably still come up with something similar.
Ok.... Back to the facts!
Of all carbon on earth, only 1 part per trillion is a C-14 atom! Ok... So that is 0.000,000,000,1% C-14 in the world....
So what is the mass of C-14 on Earth?
179,208,000 (one hundred and seventy nine million, two hundred and eight thousand) kg of C-14 on Earth (1.79 x 10^8 kg).
So how many individual C-14 atoms are there?
The atomic mass of C-14 is close enough to 14g per mole (1 mole of a substance = 6.022 x 10^23 atoms).
(phew, this is fun so far...)
So there is...
179,208,000 kg of C-14 on Earth (give or take a few)
We need this in grams (so multiply kg by 1,000)
179,208,000,000 g of C-14 on Earth (or thereabouts)
There is 14g per mole (approx - again, I rounded down not up because these numbers are going to get ridiculous soon and I don't need RSI (or what ever the name of it is this year) for this week of work).
so how many moles in 179,208,000,000 g of C-14?
There are 12,800,571,428 (12 billion 800 million 571 thousand 428 moles of C-14)
1 mole of C-14 contains 6.022 x 10^23 atoms....
7.709 x 10^33 atoms!!!
Yep... That's my calculation... (wow, that's a LOT of C-14 at any one stage).
(I'm now annoyed that after all my calculations I couldn't get x 10^50) but I will still go on....
(here goes)
In 5730 years half of that bulk lot of C-14 would have radioactively decayed into its daughter nucleus - N-14.
So 1 in 7.709 x 10^33 C-14 atoms will spontaneously decay... At some stage... Maybe it could be one of the half that will do it in the next 5730 years, or it could be in the next half after that... Or the next half after that!
Now think of it - C-14 isn't limited to Earth - so if we look at universal C-14 that number all of a sudden becomes MUCH MUCH larger! Well over 10^50 - where physics apparently suggests the probability of that nucleus decaying to N-14 is non existent - but it will happen!!! So it does happen! So where a physicist has said the probability is too low... Maybe I'd like to see that in an everyday reaction such as radioactive decay!
Just as a side - for those that can't comprehend how large these numbers are... If I had 7.8 x 10^33 jelly beans - how far would that stretch?
Let's make jelly beans square to start with - and we'll just look at area (not volume). So a jelly bean (for arguments sake) is 1cm x 2cm.
So if I laid them say.... 25m wide (so we could make a jelly bean highway) there would be 2,500cm wide (using the narrow end of the jelly bean) we'd need 2,500 jelly beans for one row.
So just 10 rows of jelly beans (spanning a total of 20cm) would need 25,000 jelly beans.
so 10 = 25,000 JBs
100 = 250,000 JBs (just multiplying by 10) (now we've only gone 2 metres in our 25m wide jelly bean highway and we've already used 250,000 jelly beans. Haven't got far yet).
If we had 1 million JBs we'd have travelled just 8 metres!!!
10 million JBs would take us 80 metres down this 25m wide jelly bean highway.
100 million JBs would take us 800 metres (you could have an Olympic running race on our 25m wide jelly bean highway).
1 billion JBs would take us 8km (not that far really)
100 billion JBs would now take us 800 km (from Cairns to Rockhampton approx).
1 trillion (just a thousand billion) would take us 8,000km (you could drive from Cairns to Perth to Sydney on this highway of jelly beans - you only need a trillion of them)
(get to the point damn it).
7.8 x 10^33 JBs would take you 61,668,032,914,285,714,285,714,285 km (I don't know how to translate that number but I think that would be 61,700 yotta metres).
This is a 25m wide highway of jelly beans!
Basically that would mean your highway (25m wide of jelly beans) would stretch from here, around the sun, around Pluto and back again.... And probably a little further too....
Needless to say I've now wasted enough time to go and cook me some lunch!
we can thank the introduction of the Old English language for all that confusion and hate 
