When presented with the Electric Universe theory and the planetary catastrophes that might have occurred in the past, a commonly evoked question is: When did it all take place?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 thousand 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 tuned 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 much older than is thought. Until some radical new discovery is made, no one can be sure.
By Stephen Smith
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OK DB I will,
This thread starts off more or less talking about carbonization of organics and mineralization and then meanders off into the depths of astrophysics.
I freely admit to being lazy.
I refuse to debate anything that requires I hit the stacks hard.
I wing it or nothing.
Thus I am sticking with coal.
The above post needs to decide what particular aspects of geology it wishes to reference.
Coal is cooked organic matter.
Its not a fossil.
Its coal.
You are right DB in that coal could be manufactured fairly quickly.
Soft brown coals could be created quite quickly geologically speaking.
Swamp deposition, cover it up with pretty much anything that prevents organic decay and a quick heat 'n' squeeze should get you some soft coal like material in relatively short order.
A mud slide or flood covering a standing swamp forest, the old heat 'n' squeeze and bobs your uncle. A coal "forest".
No big deal there.
Because of a fairly light level of compaction the forest would probably be a relatively young, soft coal.
But the coal forest would not extend through geological ages as the above article states.
Unless faulting or folding took place throughout the coal bed, and that's a whole different kettle of fish
Very hard coals like anthracite on the other hand would be very old geologically.
Next up is the ice cores as quoted above.
Only a few thousand years old, nothing to do with either coal or fossils.
Next up are fossils.
These are not coal.
They are rock.
They tend to consist of "casts" of the plants or animal that are replaced by various sedimentary rocks.
Like shale's,mudstone's,siltstone's and claystone's.
Sometimes the fossil itself is replaced by a mineral.
This replacement mineral is usually silica in solution.
Time,heat and pressure and you have a chunk of agatized plant or animal as an example.
The ages of just about all fossils are well understood.
Cretaceous, Jurassic so forth and so on.
Nothing to do with the creation of coal.
Next up the condition of the fossils as described in the article above.
Plate tectonics is well understood.
Faulting, folding, subduction zones it all piles up and rips apart the beds of fossils.
This explains the strange piled up and ripped apart fossil beds.
Next up the "groups" of animals.
Ever hear of undersea eruptions,earthquakes, landslides, mudslides?
That's how you get large groups of fossilized fish.
Same deal with dinosuars.
Timelines are well undestood and fairly well fixed.
There is a host of methods of dating the various rock formations availibele to the scientific community.
The calender gets better and better every year.
The above article states nothing that calls into question our exsisting knowlege base
Oh and radiocarbon dating is never used to date fossils in the first place.
No organics thus no carbon.
They tend to use radiometric decay (isotope decay).
Trex
