A 4-Year-Old Boy Breaks a 3,500-Year-Old Jar at an Israeli Museum

[theprestige]

He has no reason to 'hold off', scanning with a microscope doesn't damage the artifact.

Are you absolutely sure about that?

A scanning electron microscope (SEM) is a type of electron microscope that produces images of a sample by scanning the surface with a focused beam of electrons.

[...]

In the most common SEM mode, secondary electrons emitted by atoms excited by the electron beam are detected using a secondary electron detector

[...]

Specimens are observed in high vacuum in a conventional SEM, or in low vacuum or wet conditions in a variable pressure or environmental SEM, and at a wide range of cryogenic or elevated temperatures with specialized instruments.

[...]

SEM samples have to be small enough to fit on the specimen stage, and may need special preparation to increase their electrical conductivity and to stabilize them, so that they can withstand the high vacuum conditions and the high energy beam of electrons. Samples are generally mounted rigidly on a specimen holder or stub using a conductive adhesive.

Scanning electron microscope - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

The Sample preparation section of the Wikipedia article goes on to detail all the things that are commonly done to samples to prepare them for electron scanning. It sure seems a lot more intrusive than simply "scanning with a microscope [that] doesn't damage the artifact."

 

[TragicMonkey]

We value the study of the past so much that we're not going to study the past, because we could damage artifacts. So we'll wait for future generations to have better technology, and they'll also have to reinvent archaeology because it won't have been practiced for however many centuries it takes for a civilization that doesn't do archaeology to develop an interest in archaeology. Also because technology always gets better over time, at no point can anyone decide they are sufficiently advanced to be trusted to perform archaeology because the next century might do even better at it. So archaeology must be suspended indefinitely.

 

[Thermal]

Au contraire! Not indefinitely: permanently. There may always be a better tech in the future. Gotta hold off till we max out the limits which will always be... you know, in the future.

 

[theprestige]

I mean, we already know that photons affect surfaces over time. There's a reason museums prohibit flash photography. What pressing question do we have to answer by excavating a site? What can't be left in situ and unobserved, until future archeologists come up with a way to do it without exposing it to light?

 

[TragicMonkey]

I mean, we already know that photons affect surfaces over time. There's a reason museums prohibit flash photography. What pressing question do we have to answer by excavating a site? What can't be left in situ and unobserved, until future archeologists come up with a way to do it without exposing it to light?

We know there are risks in performing surgery. Therefore we shouldn't do any until the future, when they have developed less risky techniques.

 

[Thermal]

Down with ibuprofen, and back to trepanning. It's for the future.

 

[theprestige]

Down with ibuprofen, and back to trepanning. It's for the future.

I mean... Ibuprofen answers a pressing question the best way we currently know how. I don't see how archeology can make a similar claim.

 

[TragicMonkey]

I mean... Ibuprofen answers a pressing question the best way we currently know how. I don't see how archeology can make a similar claim.

Archaeologists do the best they can with the tools and technology they have available at this time.

If you insist on waiting for a hypothetical perfection to become possible you will never do anything that is merely good. In fact, you would never do anything at all!

 

[grunion]

Tl/dr Based on newly developed technologies, traces of psychedelic compounds were found on an (Egyptian) Bes cup from the 2nd century B.C. The cups are theorized to have been used in various rituals, including fertility.
Fifteen other Bes cups exist in museums around the world but, due to various factors including handling and contamination are not yielding the same results.
It’s the first evidence that the ancient Egyptians, like the Mesoamericans, used hallucinogenic substances for ritual use.

Paywall link.

 

[EHocking]

You don't need to know what kind of cake it is for the analogy to work, just that it's very big, which should be clear from context.

For the record, I did not know sheet cake was an Americanism, but I've just searched and not found a more universal term for 'really big cake like you'd serve at an office party.' So in retrospect a better way to put it would have just been 'a really big cake,' in which case the analogy wouldn't actually have worked any better, and you wouldn't have found out what 'sheet cake' means.

I actually meant a big layer cake though, I didn't realise sheet cake meant one layer on a baking sheet, and thought it meant a huge baking sheet sized cake.

Soooo, the example in your analogy wasn’t even correct?

 

[Ron Swanson]

My youngest boy was very rambunctious, and I could sort of see that happening ... WHICH is why He never got to see a museum until he was about 11 years old