World's oldest tree discovered in Sweden

[Kärnfysikern]

No, it's not alive and yes it is, kinda. In order to do Carbon test 14C, it must be organic and it must be dead. If it was alive it would still be taking in 14C and doing 14C testing is worthless.

Not nessecarly, the old rings of a tree doesnt receive any new carbon once they have formed so its possible to carbon date living trees.

Seems to be different stories in different newspapers, but from what I can gather from swedish news its the roots that has been dated and aslong as the root stays the same I dont know why they would call the "new" trunk a clone. Is still the same root. Ohh well trying to interpret news articles when it comes to scientific matters is ****ing confusing

[kfrost06]

Not nessecarly, the old rings of a tree doesnt receive any new carbon once they have formed so its possible to carbon date living trees.
Seems to be different stories in different newspapers, but from what I can gather from swedish news its the roots that has been dated and aslong as the root stays the same I dont know why they would call the "new" trunk a clone. Is still the same root. Ohh well trying to interpret news articles when it comes to scientific matters is ****ing confusing

Very interesting, wasn't aware of that. I don't know much about botany and next to nothing about dendrochronology but I certianly agree the articles are hard to interpret, I read a few of them and they dance around the issue. I'd be surprised if a living tree didn't have carbon going through it, I don't know much in the area but I just visualize sap, nutrients, water, ect. traveling from the roots up to the branches and vise versa. I actually studied carbon dating in grad school and wrote a paper on the carbon dating of the shroud of turin. I worked extensively on mass spectrometry but never had the pleasure of using an accelerator mass spectrometer (AMS). I do know that the chemist will do the analysis and the other sciences are left to explain the results. In the Shroud case, an AMS dated the shroud to around AD 1260 - 1390 but the controversy was contamination, i.e. it was argued that it had increased carbon due to contamination by bacteria and bacterial residue from being handled and the question of wether the Shroud was mended during the Medival age.