Timeline for What evidence would there be if radioactive decay changed 7,000 years ago?
Current License: CC BY-SA 4.0
10 events
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| Oct 28, 2019 at 20:53 | comment | added | AlexP | @M.A.Golding: Tree ring sequences do not have to come from the same tree to be connected. At present the longest continuous tree ring sequences go back over 12,000 years in Europe, and about 8,500 years in North America. The problem arises when archaeologists find a piece of wood 10,000 years old according to the tree rings and carbon dating strongly disagrees. | |
| Oct 26, 2019 at 0:18 | comment | added | Patricia Shanahan | Thanks for the corrections on the age of the oldest tree. I have edited the answer to delete the incorrect claim. | |
| Oct 26, 2019 at 0:17 | history | edited | Patricia Shanahan | CC BY-SA 4.0 |
deleted 46 characters in body
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| Oct 26, 2019 at 0:04 | comment | added | Mooing Duck | @M.A.Golding: The tree doesn't necessarily have to be alive anymore, as long as you can accurately estimate when it died. | |
| Oct 25, 2019 at 23:12 | comment | added | Loren Pechtel | 7000 year old trees? There are plants that old but AFIAK not with the original material still present. | |
| Oct 25, 2019 at 19:52 | comment | added | Vogon Poet | @Punintended That sequence would be between 7,050 - 7,100 YO in this fiction. Northern hemisphere is good. | |
| Oct 25, 2019 at 19:30 | comment | added | Punintended | @PatriciaShanahan In response to your comment on my post, here is evidence that I found rather surprising: "As of 2013, the oldest tree-ring measurements in the Northern Hemisphere are a floating sequence extending from about 12,580 to 13,900 years" | |
| Oct 25, 2019 at 17:33 | comment | added | M. A. Golding | @Patricia Shanahan Actually the oldest known living tree, "Methuselah", is calculated to be "only" 4,851 years old. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_oldest_trees If you know of older living trees that are 7,000 years old please inform the scientific community of the details. | |
| Oct 25, 2019 at 13:29 | comment | added | Vogon Poet | Running through a half-life calculator a 7,500 year old sample will $^{14}$C date to 38,900 years old if this change occurred. The overlapping rings from BC 5k~9k will look anomalous, and that is a problem for this story. I think this trick can't be done with a precipitous $\lambda$ change. It will have to be more gradual - which makes a new problem... | |
| Oct 25, 2019 at 4:45 | history | answered | Patricia Shanahan | CC BY-SA 4.0 |