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Carbon From Outer Space Older Than Our Sun
Roland Piquepaille writes "While looking at interplanetary dust particles (IDPs) found in the Earth's stratosphere, researchers from the Washington University in St. Louis have found carbon older than the Solar System. They identified the organic material by its carbon isotopic composition, different from the one of carbon found on Earth. "Our findings are proof that there is presolar organic material coming into the Solar System yet today," said Christine Floss, the leading scientist. "This material has been preserved for more than 4.5 billion years, which is the age of the Solar System. It's amazing that it has survived for so long." This overview contains more details and references. It also contains pictures including the one of a sample's isotopic structure at a sub-micrometer scale."
Not really, some of you may recall that the law of conservation matter sez that matter cannot be created nor destroyed. So it had to survive. If it hadn't then this would be amazing because it would cast strong evidence against the law of conservatin of matter. I'm mean, really now, what else would it do besides float around in space forever?
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Unknown host pong.
Seeing that carbon generation is a long way down the chain from the present hydrogen -> helium main cycle our star is in, it is logical to conclude that all carbon here on earth must at one point have come from some extra-solar source.
So this is news because?
You are in a twisty maze of processor lines, all alike.
There is a lot of hype here.
Actually, I have a hard time understanding how they could use the ratio of 12 to 13 to date the carbon to 4.5 billion years if both isotopes are stable. Radiocarbon dating of the type we use to analyze fossil remains is based on the decay of C 14, which according to link above has a half life of about 6000 years. That makes it good for archaeology, since human history doesn't go back more than a couple orders of magnitude further, but I don't think you could extrapolate back billions of years that way. You'd end up with an imperceptibly small amount. Too bad the article doesn't specify what particular isotopes they're looking at...
Maybe, maybe not.
Assume that they have 6*10^20 atoms of the stuff. If the half life is a billion years, then they can 'sample' >10^10 decays. That's not a small sample.
YAW.
Your head of state is a corrupt weasel, I hope you're happy.
It would really be surprising if our sun was older than the carbon from outer space.
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Okay, I'll give you the benefit of the doubt. The fact that I don't agree with you, then, probably means I'm misunderstanding you. Your original example was that our estimate of half lives may be invalid because of small sample size, yes? However, we've looked at samples on the order of 10^25 atoms, at least... probably 10^30 for uranium and carbon. These are not small samples. The other possibility is that our estimate is exactly correct, but that half life is dependent upon some external factor, which has not changed during our time of study but changes frequently elsewhere. This is, as far as I can tell, entirely unsupported by any evidence at all, nor is there any suggested mechanism for how it migth occur; therefore, it is actually less possible than the idea of gravity changing rapidly with distance, for at least proposals have been made that suggest that, although they are far from widely supported.
I've had this sig for three days.