Does advanced technology give us conclusive evidence of past events?

Answer 1

In many cases, we can unlock huge chunks of information about the past by using advanced technology as a key. Let's look at a few things and see this in action. Carbon-14 is slightly radioactive, and levels of this isotope in the air have been pretty constant over the past hundred thousand years. We know this because of the air trapped in ice cores taken from deep holes in ice at the poles. This translates into carbon-14 (C-14) levels that were and are pretty constant in all living things now and back over that last hundred thousand years. When something that was alive dies, the C-14 in it begins to decay and is not replaced by respiration or life processes. By subjecting dead "stuff" that was once alive to refined analysis, we can tell how long ago it died. We cannot reach back to a hundred thousand years, but we can go back many tens of thousands of years with careful application of radiocarbon dating technology. In the case of uranium-239, this isotope has an exceptionally long half-life. We can sample certain rock types and date them back to nearly four billion years. Rock samples from space allow us to date materials back even further, hence the estimated age of the earth at about four and a half billion years. We're very good at doing stuff like this, despite what a few Bible-thumping zealots think. The technology does work, and few do not accept the science ("advanced technology") behind the processes. Analysis of fossils has allowed us to paint pictures of what life millions of years ago was like on planet earth. And the analysis of rocks opens the pages of the dusty books of the past and allows us to see things like the movement of land masses. We could go on all day about the application of advanced technology to revealing what the earth was like long ago. As to the ability of advanced technology to supply "conclusive evidence" regarding the past to the investigator looking into such things, most thinking people who understand the "advanced technology" believe that the suppositions of the investigators are correct. Any "doubts" will appear as qualifications and as margins of error in the publication of the investigators. Main stream modeling of the past based on what we have learned by applying that advanced technology is accepted by most. Like all good science, it can be revised based on new discoveries, but any who do not wish to accept results do so only by the broadest suspension of rational thought. Science, the deliverer of the advanced technology used to investigate the past, is not perfect, but it's good at delivering truth. Really, really good at it.