How Long Ago?
Jun 23, 2009

There are beds of coal covering millions of square kilometers all over the world. They vary in thickness and composition, as well as in the material combined with them in situ. Insects, leaves, tree trunks, rocks of every kind, and the bones of animals from hundreds of species abound—some say human bones have been found in a Pennsylvania coal seam. There are carbonized trees standing upright in some coal deposits, although how they extend downward through so many "geological ages" is a mystery to paleontologists, since the layers are said to progress through eons of time: 250-500 million years ago.

There are forests of mineralized trees under some of the deepest ice in Antarctica. Cores drilled through the ice sometimes contain scorched and petrified wood fragments. Mineralized trees cover large areas of the American prairie, a so-called "petrified forest" encompassing thousands of specimens. Not forgetting to mention the bones of animals in unbelievable numbers entombed within sedimentary deposits hundreds of meters thick alongside their fossilized forest home.

Fish skeletons in shoals that could number in the millions of individuals pose in frozen postures, as if they are swimming through a matrix of sandstone. What force could bury a school of fish covering thousands of square kilometers in an instant, leaving their skeletons in lifelike positions, fins extended, mouths open, as if they were killed and turned to stone in between one breath and another? How could it keep them whole, without being disarticulated or crushed?

Trilobites, sauropods, pterosaurs, cycads, ginkgos, clams, dragonflys—all preserved for what is said to be millions, hundreds of millions, and even billions of years in a variety of minerals. Some fossils, unlike the fish that appear as if they are still swimming, are broken and disjointed, or scattered over a wide area. Some are entangled in heaps almost as tall as mountains, with multitudes of different species all mixed together in a grisly zoological assemblage. Combined in giant solidified piles with splintered trees and shredded leaves, one is hard-pressed to find a singe intact skeleton amidst the chaos.

When did the animals meet their dooms? When did the forests burn, freeze and then succumb to their very tissues being replaced by stone? How accurate is the system used to date the fossil forests and animal graveyards?

One of the most basic assumptions in the development of an accurate "calendar" by which events could be dated was that the Earth is an isolated celestial body that does not interact with other bodies. Another assumption is that radioactive decay rates are constant, Earth's energy cycle has received no additional input since the radioactive elements were formed, or no alteration to its electrical or magnetic fields have taken place. That means geologists can "rely on" a smooth, continuous clock ticking off the millennia at a measurable rate. Is that the case, however? Is there evidence that the radiometric dating methods that scientists use with such confidence can change?

Cosmic rays or electrical discharges could increase the percentages of C-14 ("radiocarbon") in living organisms. If the remains of those organisms were dated using the standard radiocarbon ratios, they would appear to be much younger than they are, or much closer to the present era than they should be.

Conversely, if an increase in radioactively neutral carbon isotope were to accumulate in our biosphere from burning forests, from cosmic dust, or from extensive volcanic eruptions, anything dated following whichever particular cause would appear much older. No definite timeline can be constructed using the dating methods traditionally thought to produce accurate results.

It seems possible that plasma interactions with Earth and other charged bodies in space, or the impact of ion beams from a vast cloud of plasma on our biosphere could disrupt all the elemental changes that are used to date rocks: uranium changing to lead; potassium changing to argon; or samarium changing to neodymium. Therefore, the Earth could be much younger than the billions of years commonly ascribed to it. It is equally possible that it is much older than is thought. Until some radical new discovery is made, no one can be sure.

By Stephen Smith