EpDis: Thirdspace

[Wulf]

Hey, it's the future, terms stick around after they're no longer accurate.

There's an entire generation now that has no clue that they're not really dialing their friends on the phone, or filming things with their digital cameras. They're not even rewinding their DVDs to go back to the beginning of the scene.

Some might even forget that they're not really clicking links on their mobile phones, but if you try to tell them that they'll just hang up on you.


...Or carbon dating just sounds like it would work so they threw it in, but I'm a bit of a Devil's advocate.

 

[A_M_Swallow]

Hey, it's the future, terms stick around after they're no longer accurate.

There's an entire generation now that has no clue that they're not really dialing their friends on the phone, or filming things with their digital cameras. They're not even rewinding their DVDs to go back to the beginning of the scene.

Some might even forget that they're not really clicking links on their mobile phones, but if you try to tell them that they'll just hang up on you.


...Or carbon dating just sounds like it would work so they threw it in, but I'm a bit of a Devil's advocate.

Meteors are dated using lead dating.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lead-lead_dating

With minor adjustments both carbon and lead can be dated using the same equipment. Wait 250 years and such adjustments could have been automated.

 

[Springer]

I think the point that Lennier's Tears was making is that carbon-14 has a half life of 5,700 years, so you can't really use it to date anything older than 50,000 to 100,000 years. The Thirdspace artefact was millions of years old. No advancements in technology in the future is going to change the half life of carbon.

 

[Mororless]

My guess it was just a bit of shorthand by JMS, a lot of the public understand that carbon dating allows you to judge the age of old objects without really understanding that it works via radioactive half life.