State of the Art Tech Reveals Tomb Dates | Expedition Unknown | Discovery

hi there hi hello hey good to see you
Tim Josh this is Tim Canard how are you
nice to meet you nice to meet you too
he’s going to help us understand this better

okay so Tim tell us what you’re going to do
I’m going to use a technique called OSL
that stands for optically stimulated luminescence
optically stimulated luminescence that sounds
that sounds risque that’s what is it

I can tell the last time that this sediment
in this burial was exposed to daylight
how he’s a witch exactly

every grain of sand and soil in the tomb
contains particles of quartz
and when these particles become deposited in the earth
they begin to accumulate faint amounts of radiation

OSL measures the radiation
and can pinpoint almost exactly when a soil sample
was last exposed to light
which in this case would give us the age of the burial

so we’re just going to take a few soil samples
no it’s not quite as simple as that
cuz to do it I need it to be completely dark
and he does mean completely

exposing the samples to even a small amount of light
will reset the clock on them
and make the entire experiment worthless
so we have to be in complete darkness

exactly so we’re going to have to seal this tomb
the way it was intended
yeah sure sure just seal us in here with 12 dead bodies
okay sounds scary here we go

so that this advanced tech can unlock the date
of this ancient tomb
Pierce Paul’s team brings in tarps to seal the entrance
and we power down our camera’s bright lights

okay it’s red light only from now on
Yep this will not affect the sample
no we’re good as it is

so I’m just cleaning away the sediment
that’s potentially been exposed to some white light earlier
so what we need to do is sample the sediment
from beneath the skeleton directly into these pots

and then I’ve got a machine that can tell us luminescence
got it so there we go good sample from way underneath
this is what the samples look like
yeah and you can see the quartz

little glimpse of light off that quartz
irradiated quartz that’s right
okay so we have our samples
yeah so we’re good

so we got the means now to date the skeleton
now I need to take these to St Andrews to do so
we’ve got to keep them very dark
so I’m going to seal them in these black bags

before we even think of opening them
Tim got it
Tim seals up his samples for a trip back to his lab
where he’ll get the results in a few weeks’ time
hopefully pinpointing the age of the burial