Science and carbon dating ancient sites.... by kaneman

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Science and carbon dating ancient sites....

POSTED BY: KANEMAN
UPDATED: Friday, January 7, 2011 06:31
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Thursday, January 6, 2011 4:14 PM

If I grabbed some old rocks, went out into the wilderness, made a structure, left it for fifty years, went back "discovered" it...would scientists date it to the age of the rock?

What I'm getting at is I'm watching Ancient Aliens on History channel...they keep saying "scientists" have dated the site...usually by a rock ...as......

But I'm sure if the corner stone of my home was dated...it would be far older than 1911.....know what I'm saying? Aren't all rocks really old? And even if using a bone at the site, how do they know the bone came from the time and not that the structure was built on the bone because they did not have carbon dating or desire to see the value in an old bone..thus left a much older bone at a much younger site.....

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Thursday, January 6, 2011 4:16 PM

KANEMAN

using my nookcolor...hard as hell to type..hope you understand that....

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Thursday, January 6, 2011 4:23 PM

AURAPTOR

America loves a winner!

Carbon dating isn't used on rock. It's used on organic material. My guess is that what's being C dated is the wood which was used in the support of the structure.

" I do not love the bright sword for its sharpness, nor the arrow for its swiftness, nor the warrior for his glory. I love only that which they defend. "

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Thursday, January 6, 2011 4:45 PM

BYTEMITE

^That. Generally, there'll be some organics around the structure, grass or leaves or some such that'll be within the vicinity of the age of construction, possibly just UNDER the structure.

There are problems, though, if what you're trying to determine the age of is older than about 50,000 years, but there's still ways you can figure it out. The first is by nearby fossils, if you can find any, and the second is by radio-isotope dating igneous layers around the buried subject of interest to get lower and upper time limits.

All rocks can be dated back as old as when they first cooled as igneous rocks; there's all these radio-isotopes floating around in the fluid mixture, and when the mixture cools, some quantity of radio-isotopes get trapped in predictable amounts. Then you figure out how much decayed from the time the rocks set.

Sometimes there aren't any igneous formations in the vicinity of the layer you're looking at, but it helps to remember that different layers of rock occur as a result of regional conditions, and people can find ways to date a specific layer based on other parts of the region (near igneous rocks, near where they found some fossils). So knowing the name and approximate age of the formation in which you discovered the find also helps.

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Thursday, January 6, 2011 6:25 PM

DREAMTROVE

there are lotsof radioactive dating done from rocks.

if.a show has aliens in it, anything is fair game.

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Friday, January 7, 2011 6:31 AM

MAGONSDAUGHTER

The world is only 4000 years old. Scientists are just silly.

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