Sudbury Meteor
 

Thursday, at a private residence near here, I held a 20# chunk of conglomerate rock which is a piece of the *Sudbury Meteor*, geologically carbon dated at 1.8 billion years ago. :)

OK, that's about as far OT as you can get! :)

Yeah but BillyMac and Padgett haven't responded yet.

OK - now a). That's funny, and; b). You are correct!

:)

I'm What You Call An Expert (B.S., M.S. Geology) ...
 

Sorry, you're mistaken. The Carbon 14 dating limit lies around 60,000 years. Carbon 14 has a very short half life, and is normally used to date organic remains, wood, bones, teeth, etc., not rocks, like the remains of the Sudbury Meteor.

The Sudbury Meteor remains were probably dated using the Uranium-Lead, the Rubidium-Potassium, or the Potassium-Argon radioactive dating methods.

The meteorite that created the crater was an iron-nickel meteorite, which is why this area is one of the world's largest suppliers of nickel, and the reason why older Canadian nickels, pre-1958, are attracted to a magnet. Nickel was cheaper in Canada than in other parts of the world. These nickels have a higher percentage of nickel, one of three elements attracted to a magnet, the others being iron, and cobalt, than the nickels of the United States. As the cost of the metal nickel increased to a price such that a nickel was worth more than five cents, even Canada decreased the amount of nickel in their five cent coins, and modern Canadian nickels are no longer attracted to a magnet.

That's a relief
 

I thought you just stayed at a Holiday Inn Express last night! :p

Hey, thanks, BillyMac.
...This rock couldn't hold a magnet.... (I had asked the Owner to try it.)

I leave to work three Grade 8 games today and look what I miss! :D

Don't forget to read my game report in forum #3. :eek:

I watched Shawshank last night.

In 1966, Andy Dufresne escaped from Shawshank prison. All they found of him was a muddy set of prison clothes, a bar of soap, and an old rock hammer, damn near worn down to the nub. I used to think it would take six-hundred years to tunnel under the wall with it. Old Andy did it in less than twenty. Oh, Andy loved geology. I guess it appealed to his meticulous nature. An ice age here, million years of mountain building there. Geology is the study of pressure and time. That's all it takes really, pressure, and time. That, and a big ***-****** poster. Like I said, in prison a man will do anything to keep his mind occupied. It turns out Andy's favorite hobby was totin' his wall through the exercise yard, a handful at a time. I guess after Tommy was killed, he decided he had been here just about long enough. Andy did like he was told, buffed those shoes to a high mirror shine. The guard simply didn't notice. Neither did I... I mean, seriously, how often do you really look at a mans shoes? Andy crawled to freedom through five hundred yards of **** smelling foulness I can't even imagine, or maybe I just don't want too. Five hundred yards... that's the length of five football fields, just shy of half a mile.