Quote:
|
Originally Posted by Moogs
Not sure how you're defining "organic", but much of the moon is convered with basalt rock like the kind found on earth, and evidently it can be dated. Good question though; I'm open to any different interpretations....
|
Carbon 14 dating as far as I remember from Rocks For Jocks (Geology 101), requires dead organic material, be it plant or animal life. I might be wrong, but I'm too tired to google it right now and I don't really want to derail this thread further.
Quote:
For reference:
Anything in that description fit your definition of "organic"? Maybe they were dated, just not with Carbon-14? Possible I misinterpretted something I read.
|
There a lots of ways of dating rocks. But they fall into two categories, direct and indirect dating. Direct, as its name implies, can be used to determine a specific date that the rock was formed or placed where it is. An example would be finding fossils of animals that we know the dates that they lived or an event like Mt. Vesuvius erupting for which we have a good time frame. The other type is based on our knowledge of how rocks form and which ones form first. There is also complex folding, but I'm not sure that would survive in a comet. We don't know how old the rock is, but we know which rock is older.
Regardless, if NASA thinks they have a good idea how old the rock is, I trust them. Shit, they put a man on the fucking moon, I bow to their knowledge of science.