the upside of nuclear testing
back in 1989, the ivory trade was officially (though not practically) shut down by international agreement. since then it’s been a bit of a contentious issue.
what makes this a science story and not an endagered-species story or an economics story, is that scientist thinks he has the technology to reopen the ivory trade, on more-acceptable terms.
Past Nuclear Tests May Unlock Africa Ivory Sales [reuters, july 16, 2004]Nuclear physicist Elias Sideras-Haddad says he can determine when an elephant died as well as its age by a new carbon-dating technique applied to the tusks — a process made possible by the above-ground nuclear tests of the past.
the reuters article mentions a presentation from two years ago in japan… there’s a faint echo of that here [pdf] – it was called “Dating studies of elephant tusks from the Kruger National Park South Africa using accelerator based mass spectrometry.”
that’s just not terribly satisfying, but the paper [pdf, october 3, 2002] itself is also available from lawrence livermore national labs. sadly, it’s a pretty bad scan-based document as opposed to real text, so it’s not much fun to read.
given the bush administration’s concept of science, this may just come back as a good reason to build those baby nukes and get out of the test-ban treaty. there seems to be more solid science behind this than behind, for example, the missile-defense plan…. and you can spin it as an economic support plan that lets those poor african countries pay back their debts.