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Comment by 6D794163636F756 | Hacker News Reader

Thank you for pointing this out. I thought it was referring to the age of the samples taken before reading your comment. It made the abstract less disappointing.

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I only clicked on the article because I thought it was the age of the samples too.

If something has a negative age, does that mean it is from the future?

I can't tell if you're joking, but negative numbers are used to represent years BC.

It responds to the comment "I only clicked on the article because I thought it was the age of the samples too." Age is "The length of time that a person or thing has existed." AD and BC are both absolute values from a zero point, both positive ("1 BC is year 0, 45 BC is year −44" [0]). A relative chronological dating by some phenomenological method such as radiocarbon or thermolumenescence might establish a negative date relative to some other known benchmark [1].

How might something dated from the future be found? I'm not certain, but maybe it has to do with aliens that are all the rage nowadays.

If I were 12 years old, I would have been born 12 years ago.

If I were -12 years old, I would be born 12 years from now.

0. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anno_Domini

1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chronological_dating

Yeah, makes a lot of sense. Hadn't even thought about the difference between age and year when I wrote that.

Thanks.

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