Argon-Argon Dating! Not In My Neighborhood!
There’s a new radio-isotope dating technique that’s got most geochronologists pants in a bulge!
The whole story is here - at Science Daily - where pant-bulges are a common occurrence, and no one knows your name.
If you believe Professor Farcas Coypu Paul Renne, director of the Berkeley Geochronology Center and an adjunct professor of earth and planetary science at UC Berkeley, they have managed to get the accuracy down to something like 0.25% . that ain’t too shabby!
The result is that - for instance - the best date for the Cretaceous-Tertiary, or K/T, boundary is now 65.95 million years, give or take 40,000 years. It used to be 65.5 million years, give or take 300,000 years.
For those who really want to know:
Argon-argon dating, developed at UC Berkeley in the 1960s, is based on the fact that the naturally-occurring isotope potassium-40 decays to argon-40 with a 1.25-billion-year half-life. Single-grain rock samples are irradiated with neutrons to convert potassium-40 to argon-39, which is normally not present in nature. The ratio of argon-39 to argon-39 then provides a measurement of the age of the sample.
For those readers who are not au courant on the subject of radio-dating, up until now there has not been one single isotope technique known that encompassed such a long - and useful - period of time. Usually a dating effort consists of measuring the ratios of several isotopes of several elements and kinda bracketing the resulting age dates. This is a good technique - and has an inherent self-checking feature, too - but is time-consuming and costly and sometimes inaccurate.
For the rest of you - here’s some porn.
April 28, 2008 at 1:22 pm
A lot of people when they think of UC Berkeley, and Berkeley generally, think of hoards of leftist shits, but they’d be mistaken. UC Berkeley has made some big, fuck-off contributions to humanity, most notably providing scientists to head (Oppenheimer) and contribute to the Manhattan Project. It boasts barrow-loads of renowned international prizes like Nobel, Fields Medal and Pulitzer and consistently places in the top five universities in the world.
Just imagine what the scientists at Berkeley would be able to come up with if they weren’t distracted by being surrounded by a disproportionate number of moonbats.
April 28, 2008 at 3:58 pm
McGoo, for shame. I never would have pegged you as a guy afflicted with NIMBY. Exceptin’ Goths, of course.
Gibby, it has been argued that w/o the Manhattan Project, literally millions more lives would have been lost in the war against Japan.
It is a sad time in history that this Pandora’s box was opened. Ultimately though the bomb would have been developed even had we dropped out of that race. By that point there was no stopping it. For his part I think I read that Oppenheimer was torn by what he participated in.
That said, I agree with you about Berzerkeley being a blighted place due to it’s active and systematic programming of so many who darken their doors.
April 28, 2008 at 4:30 pm
One wonders of Oppy’s nascent Leftism was simply encouraged by his environment - or planted and fertilized by it. They say one’s politics are learned at the family dinner table.
It was ultimately his undoing.
No one’s mentioned the error in the argon-argon technical description. It’s in the original article, too: I just cut and pasted it without editing. Just noticed it.
April 28, 2008 at 4:35 pm
I was a freak of nature, I think. I am the most conservative in my family. For the most part it leaned center-left. Weeping in my parent’s house when I proclaimed that EIB network was great and Rush is Right.
April 28, 2008 at 4:56 pm
I forgot to mention that they say that a lot of those “They say” things are complete bullshit, too!
LK - are you better-educated than the rest of your fambly? I already know you are of a technical bent - which should tilt you right, statistically.
My fambly is all Right except the deceased brother that was an ex-con. He was a very emotional Leftie. It was really weird to observe, ’cause he was extraordinarily rational until politics/social issues came up. Then it was like a switch was thrown - turning off rational thought.
April 28, 2008 at 6:24 pm
You could say that (I be edjumacated). But my late mother always told me “education is no substitute for intelligence”. Ow. You could say that I’m very Right, not quite Coulter or Savage (Savage worries me sometimes) but Malkin or Sowell, somewhere in there.
I started out liberal until I realized at age 17 that our “social studies” teacher was so full of shit he squeaked and so I started sleeping through his classes. I was better off that way. Most sheeple were chowin’ down on what he was dishing out though. I tell you, some of the stuff that goes right down the party line… they start speaking in reverential tones and it’s like it became a religion.
Nothing wrong with religion as long as it doesn’t center around man and what he thinks. It’s when man gets to be judgmental with it that it becomes Religion (note the capital “R”), and that’s probably the worst thing to ever happen to mankind.
April 28, 2008 at 8:45 pm
I, however, am of the opinion that the time for hope and change is over. The oligarchy is already firmly in power, keeping us in line with bread and circuses or in extreme cases the invocation of the tax laws. So, I sit, bitter and alone hugging my guns and religion closely and distrusting “immigrants” and other races because they are different from me (especially Goths).
April 28, 2008 at 8:51 pm
Well, you can tell the Goths that hail from St. Louis.
They limp!
God, do I miss fucking with Goths.
I don’t believe this is a time for hope and change. At least, not the change the pols are talkin’ about.
I suspect a scenario closer to this:
http://gatesofvienna.blogspot.com/2008/04/surrender-genocide-or-what.html
April 28, 2008 at 11:11 pm
Magoo, whats the story with your land purchase? Going ahead or what?
April 29, 2008 at 12:02 am
Dead in the water, for the moment. Thanks for asking.
I’m still about $10,000 apart from the seller. I’ve told them I’m stepping away from the deal, although I’ve told my agent to hang on to the earnest check rather than tear it up or return it to me. I also told my agent to keep me informed about the property.
The seller hinted that there was another offer in the works, but it never materialized. Meanwhile I am setting up to review some new properties that have come on the market - and the seller knows it.
Bottom line - I still want the place but am playing a waiting game with a seller I know is in a bit of a hurry.
Oh - I forgot. Ends up my aunt down there knew the old lady that owns the property. Its the old lady’s son-in-law that’s got it up for sale: she’s in a home somewhere with Alz.
It helps to have relatives that are life-long residents of the county. Now I have some of the inside story of what’s going on with the seller.
April 29, 2008 at 6:04 am
Only unhappy people long for change.
And not all of them. Depressives know that change is usually for the worse.
I read a study years ago that showed people in a clinical depression more accurately predicted the future. I wish I could find it again. I’d really like to email it to that friend who tells me not to be so negative all the time…
April 29, 2008 at 6:26 am
I guess I could accept that depressed people might not be so apt to color reality with their hopes or expectations, since depressed people have reduced hopes and expectations.
But having been through severe clinical depression - and been successfully treated for it - I can testify that 99% of all depression is under a persons direct control. Most of it is just deciding how one is going to feel. Meds help make it easier to get control of this, but the therapy is essential to learn the techniques of choosing - and how to keep the choices going. And how to stay firmly out of depressive spirals.
Meds without therapy will NOT solve the problems, they just paint over them.