4 ms·
Is there a good explanation of how that isn’t just measuring the expansion and contraction of a ruler with itself? Don’t we know the reactor is 2 billion years
by User23 2y ago
Is there a good explanation of how that isn’t just measuring the expansion and contraction of a ruler with itself? Don’t we know the reactor is 2 billion years old because of radio dating?
- Vecr 2y agoIt would be somewhat hard to tell if there's circularity somewhere, but you should be able to date it somewhat with the quantity of oxygen in the atmosphere at various times and general geological processes.
- AstralStorm 2y agoWell, it's dated against pulsars and stars. But those sources of information have a bit of an error bar on time-space distance. Which is why a synthetic clock is needed here. That will have a known inception date and the changes if any can be compared. The problem with both is they're not exactly fully closed systems anyway so there will be some margin of error ever with the length of the operation. And during the test, we might just find out something completely unaccounted for in current physics... That isn't a universal constant related at all.
- thowawatp302 2y agoNo, because you’re comparing the various proportions, it’s like comparing the contraction of various rulers made from different woods.
- adastra22 2y agoNo, those are separate processes. The isotopes produced during the natural nuclear reactor 2 billion years ago were produced in certain ratios because of the relative sizes of their nuclear cross sections, which depend on the fine structure constant. The isotopes used in radio dating are produced by spontaneous transmutation over time, which is governed by entirely different processes.