Scientists Create Petrified Wood in Days

[seriousstan]

YAKIMA, Wash. (AP) - Researchers at a national science laboratory in south-central Washington have found a way to achieve in days what takes Mother Nature millions of years - converting wood to mineral.

The ability to make petrified wood could hold promise for separating industrial chemicals, filtering pollutants and soaking up contamination, said Yongsoon Shin, research scientist at the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory.

"Wood petrified is very hard and very porous material - it's not really a wood component," Shin said Monday in a telephone interview. As a mineral product, petrified wood has a large, hard surface and a porous inside, making it ideal to soak up or separate substances or act as a catalyst in other processes, he said.

Natural petrified wood occurs when trees are buried without oxygen, then leach their wood components and soak up the soil's minerals. For instance, at the Ginkgo Petrified Forest, a state park on the west shore of the Columbia River in central Washington, trees were believed to have been buried without oxygen beneath molten lava millions of years ago.

http://apnews.myway.com/article/20050125/D87R85BO1.html

[GR]

1. This Proves That Intelligent Design Is Correct...

NOT....

[trotsky]

2. Exactly what I'm afraid of.

The uneducated cretinists will say this "proves" that ALL geological formations that were thought by those evil scientists to have taken millions of years are totally wrong, and therefore the world must be only 6000 years old and cretinism is true.

:eyes:

[Barrett808]

12. It will be hard to explain how wood got cooked at 1400 degrees in argon

To create petrified wood, the researchers bought pine and poplar boards at a lumber yard. They gave a half-inch cube of wood an acid bath, then soaked it in a silica solution for days. The wood was air-dried, cooked in an argon-filled furnace at temperatures as high as 1,400 degrees and cooled in argon to room temperature.

I suppose if the Grand Canyon was carved by the Great Flood, anything's possible.

[On the Road]

3. Creationists Have Been Arguing for Years

that this is possible. They're going to have field day with this.

[yellowcanine]

8. Yep the YECs will be all over this. Of course we can create diamonds

in the lab in a short period of time as well. But that doesn't mean it occurs in nature that way. I can also make a "fossil" track using plaster of Paris in about 10 minutes but all that proves is what cool stuff plaster of Paris is. Great for making masks also.

[lapfog_1]

4. I thought they had already done this a decade ago...

Viagra has been around that long now, right?

[unblock]

9. no, no, no. viagra creates confident wood

not petrified wood.

[On the Road]

11. Hopefully, You Don't Become Petrified

if you take it.

[lapfog_1]

14. No danger of that!

Don't need it yet (knock on WOOD!).

Can't take it even if I needed to, as I have heart defects which
might make taking Viagra dangerous.

[seriousstan]

5. Creationists will have to explain the abundance of argon gas

[AngryAmish]

6. WWB&BS?

What Would Beavis & Butthead Say?

[Zebulon]

7. Re: Scientists Create Petrified Wood in Days

I thought you were supposed to go to the doctor after four hours.

[yellowcanine]

10. That's woodie you dummy, not wood.

[Wilms]

13. You can petrify anything...

by showing it a picture of * Co members.

[dutchdoctor]

15. This piece of wood seems petrified..