
Lightning makes new isotopes - pwg
https://www.nature.com/news/lightning-makes-new-isotopes-1.23033?error=cookies_not_supported&code=580c9b9c-9c24-48aa-a823-f3a65db5e340
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itchyjunk
Does this impact carbon dating in anyways? Since it's an unaccounted source of
radioactive carbon. Thanks.

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kmm
Very unlikely, because the calibration used for carbon dating is acquired by
comparing with artifacts of a known age, i.e. experimentally, and not from
first principles.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Calibration_of_radiocarbon_dat...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Calibration_of_radiocarbon_dates)

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nonbel
How does this help if multiple date ranges correspond to the same C14/C12
ratio?

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ksaxena
Makes me think of the Electric Universe alt-theory! I wonder...

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tritium
If only they would have simply written " _gamma ray_ " instead of γ-ray, but I
suppose there are the bandwidth savings to consider...

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feikname
I see nothing wrong with using the γ-ray nomenclature, but writing gamma ray
instead would surely make the text more readable IMO.

I think it's a valid criticism, not sure why the downvote rain happened. Too
snarky, maybe?

Unless you really mean that they did this for the purpose of saving a few
bytes, then I disagree with you.

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tritium
Hacker News downvotes are to be ignored as pedantry at best. Imagine the level
of discomfort inflicted by my comment, and that should correlate well with the
amount of discomfort the HN frowny face is truly worth. Maybe it's taste is
closest to something like licking a nine volt battery.

They are mostly unproductive, and express an opinion more akin to noise than
anything else.

Don't try to predict when downvotes will occur. Only predict that aligning
your comment perfectly with the general sentiment of HN's echochamber and the
capricious views of some of its moderators, will likely result in a general
trend of upvotes.

If you ardently pine for someone else's approval, conform to their every whim.

