Dating of Old Monuments (by sarah)

I've been working my way through documentaries on various subjects as research for my Punk series and one of the things that keeps coming up is that you can't date monuments. You can date the last organic stuff inside them like food left overs and you can date when the stone was formed but you can't date when it was quarried and used to build the monument.

But I am wondering if this is true. When I was doing my MRes there was a technique that dealt with exposure dates - in this case sand dunes but I know it has been used for other things. If I recall correctly when a cosmic ray hits the surface it can cause little explosions which leave scars called tracts which can be counted. The number off them combined with the rate of cosmic rays hitting the surface gives you how long they have been sitting on the surface.

Now there is a similar thing that happens due to probability and atomic decay within rocks but you can tell the difference.

I can't remember all the specifics but it does seem to me that this could be used.

Obviously there would be issues such as open cast mining or quarrying could leave rocks on the surface for 1000s of years before building occurs but I think most builders would have removed weathered sides of blocks to make them look nice. Then there are issues over rock type - are different types more susceptable to the tracts forming? What if it is a composite material made of fossils and rock fragments?

Some monuments no longer have their outer layers such as the giant pyramid in Egypt so you would get a mixed date of = quarried date - time spent under cladding + time since cladding was nicked or disappeared.

But I can't see these as being worse than the issues surrounding migrating dunes. the dating of these structures would be very important for sorting out our own history and how civilisations have come to be etc...

There maybe more issues with dating like if it can only give dates accurate to 1000s when you need 100s or 10s of years or them only being relative to other techniques but I think it would add an extra layer to what we know.

Now obviously I have been out of the science world for years now and can't even remember what the names for all this sort of stuff is and I am not an archeology expert so maybe these are already being use or rejected or what ever and it just hasn't filtered through to the books and documentaries I am getting my hands on.

However I thought I would share my idea just incase - plus people may suggest other sources of info for me 🙂

p.s. having a quick little looky at stuff it would appear there are interesting optical dating methods for minerals that have been exposed to sunlight - surely some of that would be interesting to archeologists. Also another problem with the dating would be how long the monument had spent buried in the ground too!

Mary Leaky’s 100th Birthday (by sarah)

Today is Mary Leaky's 100th Birthday - later today I shall bake a cake like I did for Alan Turin and draw a picture.

For now here is a google doodle!

Mary Leaky's works are extremely important to us as a species and to me as an individual. To us as a species knowing where we came from helps us in so many ways including why we get sick etc... What happened in the evolution of hominids in general can tell us so much.

For me as an individual she was important as it was her writings that helped inspire me through my A'levels and onto a degree in geolog. Even in my final year I wasn't sure weather I wanted to work in her field or the origin of life.

During my GCSE's and A'levels I read all the books in our local library system to do with the Leaky's and paleo and geology things. It became a bit of an obsession - enough that my in-laws who live in South Africa send me books on the Leaky's.

Ballads of the Scientifica (by sarah)

Todays science-art is an album of science and tech poetry, a possible life origins story and the song I Want To Know Everything. It is available as a free download for the remainder of the week 🙂

Enjoy

September Challenges/To-Do’s (by sarah)

September has snuck up on me and sees me papier mache-ing like a mad thing - my aim? To create a piece of textural science art for the visually impaired and the blind.

This piece of art work does not just involve papier mache though - it involves knitting, sewing, clay sculpting, sugru, polymer clay, wire work, metal casting, wood carving, stone carving, geology and acrylic paints not too mention lots of recycled pots and tubs and our mountain of graze boxes.

This all needs to be ready for the 24th of September for the Centre Arts Exhibition in Braille. And yes I am panicking - it is a play on the tree of life but I have gone for a more coral/byozoan feel and hope to have life in various forms sitting in the polyp tubes (what I have instead of branches). A relief of the scientific creation of life will hopefully be feelable along the base along with an audio poem/story of life.

Apart from that I am researching stuff for my Punk in Pink series and generally trying to take the musical me forward.

Astrobiology Blues (by sarah)

So as many people know I wanted to be an astrobiologist and I got quiet close and then a combo of things got in the way - the main one was not actually Jeany but rather the health complications before, during and after the pregnancy. I tried to go back when Jeany started pre-school but again this ended in disastor both financially and again medically. It then became clear that there was no way even if I sorted out the instant issue of me having to pay 'top-up' fees and took another break to completely recover, I still couldn't do it due to Alaric's job and Jeany care.

At the time my mother was going through her second lot of cancer treatment and a few other issues had popped up. I had reached the glass ceiling - I had reached it probably as soon as I got pregnant with Jean but was still determined - now the decission was clear - family verses career.

And so I stopped kidding myself that I was on a 'break' from science and faced up to facts. It didn't help that I was failing at being a web-designer at the same time - a career I had thought should bring in money and be doable from home - except.. except people still expect you to turn up to meetings and things and then I was just shunted to the side by people offering shoddy but cheap web-development and I ran into people assuming I can't do things 'properlly' cos I'm female - I'm sorry but I did get this several times. So travel and child care for no contracts = FAIL. Add in clients refusing to pay for months and it was another no go.

And so before I am 30 years old I am basically on my 3rd career and not with nice financial boosters from the previous ones :/ But rather stupid amounts of debt.

But I thought I'd got over all of this - thought I was being happy with what I am building - having sold a painting, having stories accepted, getting poems short listed etc... I'd even stopped crying everytime I looked at my minerallogy texts books and started reading the texts I'd gotten to help me become a good Astrobiologist. I had and have for a long time had some vague notion of being able to write popular science books - to bring it to the public and when I run the Scouts I spent ages making up projects for their science and astronomy badges etc.. both scientific and craft (like loo roll hubble which I really need to put the how-to instructions up for!).

But I get told - you can't do that unless you are part of the science world. I have also got an issue in not having access to the journals I want nor could I even contemplate a subscription. I don't think I can belong to alot of the groups as you have to be put forward by peers which I now do not have and those I did have either forgotten me or are peeved that I let things get in the way.

And so my science - all that hard work is generally used for what? Advising the odd writer on how to build aliens and alien worlds convincingly, similar with gaming both role playing and computer games and my tentative steps into things like the paleo-art. Most of the time I convince myself that this is all fine - that this is me still being part of the science world. My science/tech poetry etc... the same.

But then there is an announcement about NASA and astrobiology and a deep depression feels me. I wanted to ignore it - after all what was I going to get if I even tried looking into this? Pain over being excluded from the actual scientific community, of not having access to papers nor people to chat about them over coffee or my standard pint of OJ in the bar. No debates, just my mum looking at me slightly blank and my little girl drawing me pictures of 'germs' to cheer me up.

So I tried to ignore it - thinking how stupid it was that I was crying over not being a scientist and putting it down to this lot of pregnancy hornmones.

And then some how from this I found myself scouring the net for any info and finding just how much the general public had got their knickers in a twist with info that was being reported wrong and that there was going to be a press conference live from NASA.

So I rearranged the family evening to watch it and snapped at my family that no they couldn't have my laptop and then spent this morning writing about it on my rarely updated Astronomy blog. This made me feel better - but I still haven't got the paper to read :/ And I'm not even sure why I took notes of the press conference and why I had to write about it.

Part of it was a friend telling me Carl Sagan would be sad if he knew I was hiding from science because I can be active in it. Alaric keeps telling me it's not too late for my science career but really it is. And I have to think like that or I will just be 'waiting' to do real things and miss out on my lovely family. I'm also generally being moppy at the moment - I am stuck - I have a sprained wrist and there is ice so going out even with crutches, even with car is not happening, writing and art are at a minimium and guitar and drums completely out.

I'm afraid I have the Astrobiology Blues and a case of the green eyes of research envy (put it this way I planned an experiment during GCSE biology to try and force microbes to use Si instead of C my reasoning was that they could both form chains and sheets and things - I was going on valencies - I wasn't allowed to run the experiment as it would take to long and be too expensive!).

There isn't really a point to this post by the way - it's just another - this is how I'm feeling.