Talk:Geology of Mercury/Archive 1

Archive 1

Dates?

Um... If there's no life on Mercury, how does one determine or even approximate the dates given? On Earth, dates are always given by tree rings, contemporary records, or otherwise radiocarbon dates from previously organic tissue. Since there has never been found any kind of organic tissue on Mercury, let alone trees or civilization, then are all these date wild guesses by so-called authorities? If so, then I would think such dates have no place on Wikipedia. And if they are not guesses, then how on Mercury did we come up with that? I would appreciate an answer sooner rather than later. LutherVinci (talk) 21:09, 27 February 2011 (UTC)

Most dates for geological events on Earth do not come from organic material but from radiometric dating of various minerals. As to the dates in this article - the dating formation of the solar system comes from the oldest inclusions found in meteorites, the dating of the Late Heavy Bombardment comes mainly from the dating of craters on the moon from the Apollo missions. Mikenorton (talk) 23:19, 27 February 2011 (UTC)

Excuse me, but I was under the impression that carbon-14 dating only works for determining the date for the death of a carbon-based life-form. LutherVinci (talk) 20:11, 31 March 2011 (UTC)

Dead Links

Some of the citations are dead. Since I am currently working on a project on Mercury (for a joined geology/astrophysics PhD course) I will see if I can update the citations. Until then (or until someone else does it) I am tagging the offenders.

79.98.199.130 (talk) 18:22, 4 January 2013 (UTC)

Vandalism

This page has been vandalized, but the offending text doesn't show up in edit mode. Can anyone fix it? I'm not really familiar with how to edit Wikipedia.

01:21 UTC, 28 July 2013 — Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.19.81.79 (talk) 01:21, 29 July 2013 (UTC)

I can't see where that's coming from - if I open the source and preview it without changes, the text isn't there. Same in visual editor - confusing. Mikenorton (talk) 06:51, 29 July 2013 (UTC)

Yes, I have noticed this as well. I noticed that since the last time I was activley contributing to Wikipedia, a few things have changed. I thought there was a new process to making edits in that they must be approved before it reflects the changes. This particular page is vandalized, and cannot be edited as it does not appear in the Visual Editor, nor in the Edit Source.

Currently, the vandalized text states there are "RAINBOWS AND PONIES" on Mercury, and "Mercury is a stupid planet" just in the intro. I never bothered to read the rest of the page yet, as I cannot seem to edit the vandalism out. Nihilianth (talk) 02:57, 6 August 2013 (UTC)

Also encountering the same problem. The history shows that ClueBot actually reverted the vandalism, but the actual revision isn't displaying. Very strange. 174.114.112.77 (talk) 01:22, 9 August 2013 (UTC)

Fixed by making a change in the article and saving it. Both ClueBot and my changes show up now. 174.114.112.77 (talk) 01:24, 9 August 2013 (UTC)