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Comment by ge96 | Hacker News Reader

Could carbon dating prove age or is that too accurate eg. needs to be 100s of years apart.

Not that I am any sort of expert on the subject, but the way I understand it is:

1. If you have a fossil you can carbon date it based on the amount of C14, which is an isotope of carbon, and is present in relatively stable amounts in living organisms. That's because a living organism takes carbon from its environment and then incorporates it in itself and C14 is continuously generated in the environment because of the radiation from the sun. As the organism dies, the intake stops, so then you can determine its age based on the half life of the C14 and the amount of it still remaining in the remains. Long story short: it cannot be accurate.

2. You can only measure this in remains of dead organisms. Maybe in leather, if the car had some, otherwise I don't think you could easily carbon date a car :)

You can probably carbon date the rubber in the tires:

https://meridian.allenpress.com/rct/article-abstract/50/4/81...

It is unlikely that a 1967 Corvette has tires on it that are more than a few years old.

If there's even a diode worth of band-gap technology in there: yes, ageing would be demonstrably different in a device that lived a couple of decades longer. The crystal lattice is not set in stone and atoms move around.

That is an interesting idea.

We are unlikely to ever get a resolution, but...

There are imperfections from the factory in every car. Welds were done by hand in 1976. Repairs were done by hand. I wonder what improbable similarities the 2 cars could have.

The car would be authentic, built in 1967. What the person is asking is whether there's a technique to distinguish a car from 1967 from a sibling that was brought back from 2036.

Look for radioisotopes from the war of 2031.

Let's say there was a Corvette made in 1967. Let's say that in the 2030's, John Titor brought it back to the past. Let's say we found this car because it had a duplicate VIN number.

Then if we put the 2 cars side-by-side, we should be able to tell if one is a re-VINed stolen car, or if they are both the same car.

I suggested we look at welds that were done by hand in 1967 to determine if the 2 cars were the same car.

Does that make sense?

In this scenario, both cars would be made in 1967.

One of the cars would be a few years old.

The other car would be about 70 years old.

Yeah?

> One of the cars would be a few years old.

Let's recheck your math. A 1967 Corvette would me more than a few years old in 2023.

We’re talking 1969 when the time travel scenario occurs.

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