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Jun 24, 2019 at 17:07 answer added Ash timeline score: 0
Jun 24, 2019 at 16:40 comment added Ash @KeithMorrison Like I said close enough for government work, actually you'd have far better chances of finding datable human objects in the soil it than anything in the rocks.
Jun 24, 2019 at 16:32 comment added Keith Morrison @Ash, coals in New Zealand are younger than most coal worldwide, but "younger" in this case means 20-70 million years old instead of 350 million. There are young lignite beds that fall within the radiocarbon dating range, but what's being sampled is individually identified pieces of wood and such, which is no different from a random chunk of wood buried in an old riverbed of the same age. And in any case, it doesn't mean it can be used generally. Being lucky enough to have datable lignite would be like finding a datable human object; it's not something you could count on.
Jun 23, 2019 at 10:32 comment added Ash @KeithMorrison We have lignites and some higher grade coals in NZ that are less than 10000 years old, granted this is an unusually geologically active country but it is possible to carbon date young organic deposits.
Jun 22, 2019 at 21:06 comment added Keith Morrison @Ash, no, you can't. Coal and jet (lignite) take hundreds of thousands to millions of years to form: radiocarbon dating is essentially useless for more than 50,000 years. Petrified wood has the organics replaced by mineralization; there's nothing to date there. There's no "close enough for government work".
Jun 19, 2019 at 19:01 comment added Ash @KeithMorrison Not 100% true, there are rocks and constituents in some rocks that you can carbon date, coal, jet or petrified wood, shell and leaf/wood preserved in mudstones are very useful that way, but close enough for government work.
Jun 19, 2019 at 13:09 comment added John @VBartilucci gotta love Pratchett.
Jun 19, 2019 at 12:58 answer added Alan Peery timeline score: 1
May 7, 2018 at 13:12 comment added VBartilucci "Oh that house? Been there years" "I know, but was it there for years...yesterday?"
May 3, 2018 at 6:21 comment added Keith Morrison @Sean, that why, as I mention below, you need to say where in Yorkshire this is happening and where the manor really came from, because radiometrics could be a huge clue. If the manor is in the west hills of Yorkshire, the rocks are Carboniferous, but if the manor and rock it was on was teleported from, say, the island of Anglesey, then that rock is Precambrian. It would be hard to explain how the hell you had a chunk of rock 200 million years older than rock below and around it with no structural evidence to explain it.
May 2, 2018 at 16:06 comment added Vikki @KeithMorrison: And all the radioisotope dating schemes that do work on rock are too imprecise to detect a difference smaller than a few hundred thousand years, for the simple reason that, unless there are volcanoes in Yorkshire that I don't know about, the local rocks are much much much older than that, meaning that all the radioisotopes that could have been used to date it more precisely have long since, because they have far shorter halflives, decayed to undetectable levels.
May 2, 2018 at 7:40 comment added EveryBitHelps @Scott, any geneaologist with any experience will be extremely annoyed at the missing data. However it's unfortunately too frequent an occurance for them and they are hardly likely to jump to spacetime anomalies as an explanation. Although, now that you mention it.... :)
May 2, 2018 at 6:17 comment added Scott Can we expand that geology tag to a genealogy one? Births, deaths and marriages were recorded (including place of residence) in England for 13 years before the manor may have appeared. A lack of any such records from 1837-1850 may be subtle, inconclusive evidence depending on the age and marital status of the people as at 1850.
May 2, 2018 at 0:07 answer added Odysseus timeline score: 6
May 1, 2018 at 22:34 answer added Keith Morrison timeline score: 9
May 1, 2018 at 22:32 comment added J.H. Cowel @ M. A. Golding—It's definitely been there since 1850, making it 170 years old at the very least; Scientist Guy doesn't dispute that. But (for reasons I haven't gotten into for the sake of brevity) he has reason to believe that its local legend status, as well as the haunting phenomena recorded inside, indicate a violation of the laws of physics that imply something beyond the ghosts of deceased humans. In fact, he's convinced the family that supposedly haunts the house never actually existed.
May 1, 2018 at 22:09 answer added M. A. Golding timeline score: 9
May 1, 2018 at 21:27 comment added M. A. Golding @J.H. Cowel You said that a manor house appeared in 1850. Do you mean that the building has been used as a manor house since it appeared? Or do you mean that the building is in the style of a manor house, whatever its actual origin? Or do you mean that the building was built as a European manor house in the middle ages or later and then transported to the location in 1850? Was the building old and dilapidated in 1850 or is it now? Were any surroundings transported or just the actual building?
May 1, 2018 at 20:12 answer added LSerni timeline score: 6
May 1, 2018 at 18:37 answer added o.m. timeline score: 23
May 1, 2018 at 17:57 comment added Keith Morrison You can't radiocarbon date rock.
May 1, 2018 at 17:55 answer added EveryBitHelps timeline score: 18
May 1, 2018 at 17:25 answer added Willk timeline score: 36
May 1, 2018 at 17:20 comment added RonJohn Another differentiator is magnetic orientation (if the stone is ferrous).
May 1, 2018 at 17:19 comment added RonJohn Following up on the @BaldBear comment: if the foundation stones were local to the area where the manor originated, they'd be different. Chemical and nuclear testing would reveal even more differences.
May 1, 2018 at 17:11 history edited J.H. Cowel CC BY-SA 3.0
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May 1, 2018 at 16:49 comment added J.H. Cowel @Bald Bear—Thanks! You said "atypical for the region". Could you elaborate? Because my problem is determining what kinds of differences my character could cite as evidence to support his theory without being a slam-dunk; i.e. it gives his skeptics enough wiggle-room to fall back on a more rational explanation. That was why I discarded carbon dating as a possibility…although the interior of the house might be a much better candidate for what I'm looking for than the geology beneath/around it.
May 1, 2018 at 16:27 comment added Willk @Bald Bear - that is a fine answer. Unpack those ideas!
May 1, 2018 at 16:21 comment added Bald Bear If manor was teleported from a different place, the rocks below and around it would be atypical for the region. If it was teleported from a different time (but same place), radio-carbon dating would give different age for the rocks, but I am not sure if a couple hundred years would make a difference here. He might have easier time dating the wood in the house walls.
May 1, 2018 at 15:43 review First posts
May 1, 2018 at 15:45
May 1, 2018 at 15:42 history asked J.H. Cowel CC BY-SA 3.0