Re:Future Dating?
on
The Chronoliths
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· Score: 2, Interesting
We use Potassium-Argon dating along with Uranium dating, and another method (altogether called 'isochronic dating') to determine the age of the Earth.
Sortof.
These methods can only really determine when a given rock last solidified, becuase the daughter products can otherwise escape. Thus the oldest rock we've found for the Earth is 3.3 billion years or so, whereas the Moon dates to 4.55.
Carbon-14 dating is tied to the atmospheric levels at a given point in time, which is correlated to tree-ring data (going back ~8,000 years) and another method which I forget. Because nukes produce C-14, it will appear to be a spike in the atmospheric data for future archeologists to puzzle out.
Slashdot Mirror
Sortof.
These methods can only really determine when a given rock last solidified, becuase the daughter products can otherwise escape. Thus the oldest rock we've found for the Earth is 3.3 billion years or so, whereas the Moon dates to 4.55.
Carbon-14 dating is tied to the atmospheric levels at a given point in time, which is correlated to tree-ring data (going back ~8,000 years) and another method which I forget. Because nukes produce C-14, it will appear to be a spike in the atmospheric data for future archeologists to puzzle out.
I always wondered if Time Lords could ever switch genders when regenerating...