A short excerpt from Et al.: Because not all research deserves a Nobel Prize
Dr. Kevin Dahlmer, Dr. Jeffrey Berkowitz, Dr. Daniel Gibbons Department of Geology, Cranberry-Lemon University, Pittsburgh, PA, USA
Abstract
Our friend Trevor has a really old mother. We’ve been debating how old she really is for years since the 7th grade using the most advanced dating methods – however, at a low sample size. Recently, a new skin and saliva sample has been collected, adding to yet another round of scientific bickering over how old Trevor’s mom truly is. After her agreement to be part of a public COVID-19 long-haul study, her tissue and DNA samples have been further analysed by world-class geologists. Each team of experts has updated its own models, adding even more intrigue to the controversial scientific mystery of how old Trevor’s mom really is. In this paper, comparative methods using radiocarbon, Radiation Surface Exposure, and makeup core sample-based chronostratigraphical methods are used to update the age estimates of Trevor’s mom. Similar to previous studies on our friend’s mother, the estimates are still inconclusive and she is still puzzlingly old, dating back to the late Bronze Age at the youngest and as far back as the mid-Triassic period as the oldest estimate.
Keywords: Trevor’s Mom, Relative Dating, Ancient Wardrobe, Radiocarbon Dating, Surface Exposure Dating, Sunbathing Cosmic Ray Exposure, Silicon-28 Implants, Chronostratigraphy, Mid-Triassic Period
This article is an excerpt from the book Et al. Because not all research deserves a Nobel Prize by B MacGraw
1. Introduction
In the world of Geochronology, there isn’t an object that’s harder to date than Trevor’s mom. Even according to his dad, it took him like three attempts just to ask her out. With Trevor’s maternal grandparents always suspiciously “away on vacation” and any documents
that might provide an answer locked away in a filing cabinet, there appears to be no written record of Trevor’s mom’s age. “Leave her alone, guys, stop,” is Trevor’s only response when we inquire which Egyptian pyramids she helped build. We theorize that her birth certificate was likely burned in the great fire that consumed the library of Alexandria[1], she was born before a common dating system, or she was born before a written language was developed[2]. If only Cuneiform tablets captured more than economic ledgers, we may have known without having to scrutinize radiocarbon skin samples or harass our dear friend Trevor, who obviously doesn’t like it when we make fun of his mother and would like us to drop the subject.
We’ve been friends forever, but Trevor refuses to comment on his mom’s age, which suggests that he’s either embarrassed or doesn’t know himself. The scientific community is limited to collecting samples directly from Trevor’s mom and applying rigorous scientific processes used to date similarly old objects such as ancient artifacts, trees, rocks, and large-scale geological formations.
2. Background
In case you haven’t been keeping up with the fast-paced world of Geochronology, in the mid-aughties, when we were all in the 7th grade, Trevor’s mom made an obscure “I Love Lucy” reference at a Labor Day barbecue. She is not that cool and wouldn’t be able to make obscure references like that unless she was a grown adult who watched the episode in the early 1950s when obscure “I Love Lucy” references would have been normal[3]. The mystery turned into a full scientific inquiry after she had agreed to some tissue sampling for a lab in Zurich. A few Swiss experts estimated she was five hundred years old while others estimated at least one million based on sediment deposits[4]!
Normally, when dating objects, it’s useful to use relative dating techniques by observing the ages of nearby items. Unfortunately, Trevor’s mom’s living room doesn’t have a TV or fast internet, which makes conditions extremely difficult for archaeological field teams of unpaid interns to collect nearby items to date her.
Figure 8.1: Trevor’s Mom’s Reagan Bush 84’ shirt dates back to the Ice Age
We did see her with an iPod Nano once that looked absolutely ancient. She still uses wired headphones! Worst of all, her wardrobe is so ancient, it’s highly pursued by the Smithsonian Institution (the world’s largest museum, education, and research complex), and she listens to music we don’t even know the genre of[5]. We pawned off her Reagan-Bush 84’ t-shirt to the Smithsonian, as shown in its new display case:
We claimed that the t-shirt dates back to the Ice Age to pay for more radiocarbon dating tests. Contrary to all of these ancient items, she always seems to be driving a large 2018 Land Rover because it makes her feel safe. This throws off all relative dating estimates[6].
When asked to corroborate the lab findings from Zurich, Trevor’s mom answered, “A lady never tells,” and retreated into the kitchen to finish baking our Tostitos pizza rolls while we were playing Halo 2 at Trevor’s 15th birthday party. 15 years and three Cranberry-Lemon PhDs later, the experts are still baffled by the mystery of Trevor’s mom’s true age[7]. Now, with the interest of the full scientific community, it’s no mystery how exciting this new tissue sample has become after another one of her infamous dry spells of giving up saliva samples[8].
Learn more about the Dating Methodology, Results and Conclusion in the Article 8 in the book Et al. Because not all research deserves a Nobel Prize by B McGraw.