Dating Demolition

 

A recent paper in Nature shows how quantitative improvements in scientific instruments can bring broad new vistas to light. Carbon 14 dating was devised to date carbon in organic matter, from bones to charcoal, in archaeology, but carbon 14 forms in any material containing nitrogen that is exposed at the Earth’s surface to the neutrons generated by cosmic rays.

The quantitative problem of applying the C14 technique to materials containing mere traces of nitrogen and carbon, like quartz , has been solved in recent years by advances in accelerator mass spectrometry, which allows dates to be calculated even if only a few parts per million of carbon are present.

The Nature paper reports on the exposure of rocks on Baffin Island by glacial ice advancing and retreating over the last few thousand years, but the same technique could just as well date the time at which an obelisk was overthrown, or a wall or column toppled by siege or earthquake. The original buried or bottom end would have been shielded  from cosmic ray C-14 generation by the mass of stone above it, but once flipped or overturned, the exposure of the bottom side to the sky would start the clock of C-14 creation on the bottom , establishing a second, different date for  the beginning of that side's continuous unshielded  exposure ,versus the exposure integral of the  top since  the structure was cut out of its parent rock and erected.

The top of a granite  Obelisk like 'Cleopatra's Needle', for example ,might yield a quartz 14 C age of 3500  while the bottom, reflecting its having been toppled in say, 500 AD might yield one of 1500

Comments

[Henry Barth]

So, if modern science gives conflicting dates in their sometimes fanciful reconstructions and dating of “history,” perhaps the creationists are right after all?

[Bob]

> perhaps the creationists are right after all?

Ya! Furthermore, this clearly increases support for the "flat" theory of Earth...

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