Q&A: 252 Million Years Ago?
252 Million Years Ago?
Question
Good morning,
How confidently can one determine the time when a certain event occurred? How accurate is the claim that a certain event took place 252 million years ago?
Thanks in advance, Benjamin
Answer
That’s a very general question, and I’m not an expert either. It seems to me that each case has to be judged on its own merits. Generally speaking, I’m fairly skeptical about the ability to be precise. Even in tests based on chemical decay, it seems to me there are various assumptions and extrapolations that lead to inaccuracies.
Discussion on Answer
There are different dating techniques. Physics is definitely relevant as well (and even the distinction between chemistry and physics itself isn’t sharp). But I’m no expert on this.
252 million years ago, “Project 252” was founded to encourage the dinosaurs to start families. But most of them preferred to remain single, and that is why they went extinct.
Best regards,
Good to sit as two, Registrar of Mammoths and Dinosaurs, Institute for the Study of Prehistoric Relationships
Eleven creations, seven multiverses, and one hundred and five universes ago, somewhere in the deepest tunnels of the mysteries of existence, black fire and white fire blazed in an eternal struggle. The white fire is the wisdom of the hidden and the teaching of the divine, shimmering Zohar, which lies beneath existence, while above it shades dance. And the black fire is the wisdom of the revealed, which cuts and conquers according to strict justice. The flames clasped one another’s flames, and a pillar of fire stormed toward the navel of the Rabbi who spins universes, and there was a world. And the world became a monument to the great war. And in all its folds it remembers her, and set fossils for itself as a memorial. And whoever inclines his ear will hear the world’s conversation and its hesitations: justice or Zohar?
That is what Rashi explained: the Holy One, blessed be He, sought to create the world with the attribute of justice, but saw that the world could not endure when the attribute of justice operated in full force, and therefore He “diminished” the attribute of justice and joined to it the attribute of mercy, which allows a person repentance and repair.
Best regards,
Gentle Dina
So does that mean one shouldn’t attach too much significance to the estimate that the overwhelming majority of life in the oceans went extinct 252 million years ago, while on the other hand one should take seriously the determination of the age of coins found at archaeological sites, where there is far less room for assumptions and extrapolations?
P.S. Is dating exclusively in the domain of chemistry, with physics having nothing to do with it?