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Petrified Wood In Days, Not Millions Of Years
prostoalex writes "Any petrified wood enthusiast would tell you that a quality product takes millions of years to mature, following Mother Nature's course, which, of course, is very frustrating for anyone experimenting. Pacific Northwest National Laboratory now managed to get the process in few days, USA Today says. The scientific achievement will be beneficial for "separating industrial chemicals, filtering pollutants and soaking up contamination"."
A piece of wood in the shape of Natalie Portman... naked and petrified!
Heh. I don't think whatever process they're using will change the half-life of carbon-14. That's a nuclear process, not a chemical one.
It would be cool though, if you could accellerate radioactive decay that easilly. You could just blast your nuclear waste with it and not have to store any more nuclear waste far underground.
If you want more on the specifics of carbon dating, check the Wikipedia:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carbon_dating
As far as accelerating radioactive decay, there is some interesting research out there about bombarding fission products with accelerated particles and causing a several-fold reduction in decay times. A former ASU nuclear physics professor envisioned one method for it:
http://members.cox.net/theroyprocess/
A note of caution: The "Roy Process" web site is run by the former professor's "Agent" so its slanted more for sales than education.
Well, you could take a sample of naturally occurring carbon and separate its isotopes. Then you could make a mixture of isotopes to fudge the data for the appropriate age. After this, you react your carbon with oxygen to form carbon dioxide. Now here's the tricky part: you have to grow your tree in an enclosed environment containing only the carbon you've altered to have the desired ratio. The room will have to be sterilized to remove any organisms with the naturally occurring ratio of carbon in their cells and you'll have to remove the existing carbon dioxide from the air.
If you do this carefully and leave a negligible amount of natural carbon behind you should get a tree which will carbon test as though it's ancient.
This would be horrifically expensive though.
My only political goal is to see to it that no political party achieves its goals.
Any petrified wood enthusiast
A what now? Those exist?!
I'm still waiting for my fake/real diamonds! $5 a carrat my ASS!
Frigging diamond cartels! I wanna cut some glass!
Well, you could take a sample of naturally occurring carbon and separate its isotopes.
No need for that. Just grab some mined coal. That stuff has been underground for a number of million years and has no C-14 left in it.
From the posts here, I guess it's not so well-known, but radiocarbon dating is pretty much useless for the modern era for exactly this reason: We've been burning so many fossil fuels that we've screwed up the natural ratio of carbon isotopes in the atmosphere.
My hope of having petrified wood delivered to my door in under a week is now closer to reality!
There is a small problem with your question. Actually you cannot carbon date petrified wood as it is not wood, rather it is stone. The organic material of the wood has been slowly replaced by minerals which creates a stone with the appearance of wood. C-14 dating itself only works for organic remains up to around 60,000 years, after that, the amount of C-14 is too small to give an accurate measurement of the age of the material. As petrified wood is usually aged in the millions of years, then you would not be able to date it using C-14 anyway. So if they have replicated the natural methed, but found a way to increase the speed at which it has occured, then there would be no C-14 to measure.
1. You didn't reference the verse, or the version correctly! It's verse 19, and KJV.
2. More contemporary versions accurately use the pronoun 'they' where you've quoted 'he.'
3. In the KJV, if it really meant God, it would have said He, not he.
But you a) don't care, and b) just wanted to sound smart, didn't you?
For future reference, the Bible can be found on line in many translations, searchable at http://bible.gospelcom.net/
But Herr Heisenberg, how does the electron know when I'm looking?
Yes, they exist - and your favourite hobbies might appear as totally bizarre to them (amongst others) as to you. Some petrified wood is opalescent and quite beautiful when polished up. I'm not specifically a fan of it, but dear old Dad is a rock-hound and has some breath-taking pieces in his collection.
Got time? Spend some of it coding or testing
You just need to get the desired ration of C-14 into the food chain. With mice you can feed them on yeast or algae pills made, at least partially, in an artificial environment. With a pine tree however, you'd have to operate a sealed 20m - 30m tall environmental chamber for 30 to 40 years with the special C-14 rich atmosphere the whole time.
Obviously you'd need a shorter time if you're wanting a smaller tree or smaller wooden object. Ten years ought to give you a tree more than large enough for a spork, be it 200 000 years old or 2 million.
Beta is broken and the link to classic doesn't work. Stop wasting our time or there won't be anybody left here.
Full Text in Advanced Materials
I love that you can always find the USA today equivalent on slashdot, but never anything more in depth, doesnt this site cater to nerds?
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