Yes indeed. So, from this I gather you would accept the notion that an impact/air burst from an errant space traveler could affect carbon dating? What little of the evidence I was able to understand seems to support that.
Another item; while doing some scouting around the web to see if there were other areas in the world affected by this event -- holy cow! Mega die-offs in much of the world of large critters INCLUDING the southern hemisphere, all at roughly the same time -- in all probability, a single event. This one was a biggie that seems to have been all but ignored until Firestone et al started making waves. Even at that it's been nearly 20 years since they began work on it, and about 6 years since their first publication.
Which all seems pretty odd when you consider this event occurred almost under our noses during what is generally considered historcal times. Some of our early ancestors actually lived through it! Must have been quite a show.
Yes indeed. So, from this I gather you would accept the notion that an impact/air burst from an errant space traveler could affect carbon dating? What little of the evidence I was able to understand seems to support that.
It just might affect some dates. There was an article some years back pointing out problems in just that area:
Lee, Robert E., 1981. Radiocarbon: Ages in error. Anthropological Journal of Canada 19(3): 9-29. Reprinted in Creation Research Society Quarterly 19(2): 117-127 (1982).Creationists have made a lot of hay by combining a couple of quotes (some 20+ pages apart) from this article into one quote, but it is possible the author was describing a real problem related to the ET event in that particular area. Creationists, of course, use this potential local anomaly to deny the efficacy of the radiocarbon method in general--but what do they really know about science, eh? (A little Canadian lingo there.)
Another item; while doing some scouting around the web to see if there were other areas in the world affected by this event -- holy cow! Mega die-offs in much of the world of large critters INCLUDING the southern hemisphere, all at roughly the same time -- in all probability, a single event. This one was a biggie that seems to have been all but ignored until Firestone et al started making waves. Even at that it's been nearly 20 years since they began work on it, and about 6 years since their first publication.
From the recent article (Goodyear et al. 2007), it sounds like they may really be onto something. The Younger Dryas could easily have been a large-scale event. I don't know that the original article's explanation is holding up as well.
Which all seems pretty odd when you consider this event occurred almost under our noses during what is generally considered historcal times. Some of our early ancestors actually lived through it! Must have been quite a show.
All of our ancestors lived through it! Otherwise, they wouldn't be our ancestors. :-)
The (Goodyear et al. 2007) article has a lot of quantitative data, and I think that theory is going to be hard to beat.
I know one of the co-authors and I'll see what I can pick up from him.