Time exposure of Lightning Strikes

In a surprise announcement, Japanese researchers found that lightning bolts can be powerful enough to cause nuclear fission, leading to new isotopes— including carbon-14.

Researchers at Kyoto University in Japan have discovered that lightning bolts can be powerful enough to cause nuclear fission. This process creates carbon-14 from nitrogen-14.

Carbon dating uses carbon-14 to date items up to 100,000 years old. If lightning is creating sufficient amounts of carbon-14 then this brings into question the accuracy of carbon dating.

We've been taught that the only place carbon-14 is created here on Earth is in the upper atmosphere.  High-energy cosmic rays are thought to strike nitrogen-14 atoms and transmute them into carbon-14. It is thought this process is constant over time and we have good understanding of where most of the carbon-14 comes from.

An additional source of carbon-14 invalidates one of the key requirements necessary for accurate dating, we simply don't understand all the sources of carbon-14.