- 3326 - PHYSICS - what we can learn from Iceman? Physics has recreated history for us. Recordings are found in unsuspected places all around us if we have the eyes and the mind to see it. The physics in astronomy is recreating the evolution of the Universe for us, if we have the desire to learn it.
--------------------- 3326 - PHYSICS - what we can learn from Iceman?
- In April 1991 Alpine hikers came across a frozen body half buried in a glacier. The corpse was an animal skinned caveman carrying a copper weapon. The location was on the border between Italy and Austria. The body was well preserved and physicists went to work to learn what they could about this historical find.
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- A study of the Iceman’s teeth was able to determine the ratio of the amount of strontium to the amount of lead that matched exactly the ratios found in the Eisack Valley near Bolzano, Italy. They concluded that that was where the Iceman spent his childhood.
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- Next a study of his bones revealed another ratio of isotope oxygen -18 to oxygen -16 that indicated the Iceman spent much of his later life at higher altitudes. Then the Iceman has excess copper and arsenic in his hair. This meant that he was active in smelting copper.
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- Physicists have studied the bones of Native Americans and have charted the cultivation of corn from the highlands of Mexico to as far as New England over a period of 7,000 years.
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- By analyzing a frozen water lily leaf preserved in the Yucatan Peninsula physicists have pinpointed the collision of a 9 mile diameter asteroid collision with Earth in the month of June 64,500,000 years ago. The blast from the explosion wiped out the dinosaurs and 50% of all the living species on the planet.
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- Which is older the Stonehenge in England or the pyramids in Egypt? Around Stonehenge they found deer antlers that were used as picks in the digging and planting the stones. The antlers were dated at 3,100 years before the birth of Christ.
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- Stonehenge is definitely older than the pyramids. The deer antlers were dated using Carbon-14 dating. Analysis determines the ratio of Carbon-12 to Carbon-14 to calculate the age. Carbon-14 is produced when cosmic rays strike nitrogen-14 in the atmosphere.
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- Chemical processes in living breathing bodies incorporate the carbon -14 at the rate of 1 atom per trillion. Carbon 12 makes up 99% of all the other carbon in the body. When the chemical processes stop, when the animal dies, carbon -14 incorporation ends and the carbon-14 remaining begins to decay with a radioactive half-life of 5,730 years. Carbon-14 dating can be used to determine ages over the range from 300 to 50,000 years.
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- Bristlecone pine trees in California are up to 5,000 years old. Dead trees well preserved are up to 12,000 years old. By analyzing the tree rings physicists can reconstruct past temperature levels, rainfall, and other weather conditions for any given year over the period.
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- For example, the drought ending the Anasazi civilization in Chaco Canyon, New Mexico was happening between the years 1276 and 1299.
- Lake sediments can occur in seasonal and annual layers. Using them like tree rings these sediments have dated the retreat of the glaciers in New England as happening from 18,000 to 13,000 years ago.
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- Ice cores in Greenland and Antarctica have uncovered history back 800,000 years. Impurities in the ice, tiny bubbles of trapped gas, have told physicists the atmospheric conditions that existed over 8,000 centuries.
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- They have isolated the most significant cold snap that has occurred since the last ice age as happening from 12,900 to 11,500 years ago.
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- The oldest fossils in the cave where Peking Man was found were 500,000 years old. Physicists used fission track dating to determine this age. Fission is when an atom splits in two. Radioactive uranium-238 fissures one out of 2,000,000 atoms. The two halves of the atom shoot away in opposite directions when this happens, leaving tracks in the crystal structure of the mineral around the atom. By counting the number of tracks in the sample to the amount of remaining uranium-238 physicist can calculate how long it took to produce the number of tracks.
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- Uranium-238 decays to lead-206 and Uranium-235 decays to lead-207. By comparing the ratios of uranium to lead for each of these two uranium isotopes physicists can calculate the precise age of a sample.
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- When the asteroid hit the Yucatan Peninsula, zircon crystals were formed in the collision. Zircon crystals contain the minerals, zirconium, silicon, oxygen and uranium. The ratio of the uranium to lead isotopes dated the collision to be 64,500,000 years ago. The dinosaurs did not survive this Chicxulub meteor. 50% of all living species did not survive. Somehow we did?
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- Using the isotopes of Argon-40 from the decay of potassium physicists have dated to oldest rocks on Earth and in meteorites to be 4,540,000,000 years old. That is the current estimate of when the Earth and the Solar System were formed.
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- Mica chips were found in the Iceman’s grindstone that dated back to 100,000,000 years. The mountains around his home just 30 miles away contained mica in rocks that were dated the same age.
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- Physics has recreated history for us. Recordings are found in unsuspected places all around us if we have the eyes and the mind to see it. The physics in astronomy is recreating the evolution of the Universe for us, if we have the desire to learn it.
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- See Review 871 to learn the physics and math used in Carbon-14 dating.
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- November 3, 2021 PHYSICS - we can learn from Iceman? 1117 3320
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