Dating the past with Radioactivity
ثبت نشده
چکیده
Very soon after the discovery of radioactivity, measurements of the heavy radioactive elements existing in nature were undertaken to determine the age of rocks (Rutherford 1904), but only when Professor Willard Libby in an evening lecture during the first United Nations Conference on the Peaceful Uses of Atomic Energy in Geneva in 1955 described how he and his research team had evolved the carbon-14 dating technique did research on radioactive dating receive a real impetus. Since that time laboratories in many countries have made rapid progress and geologists, geophysicists, geochemists and archaeologists have joined forces with nuclear scientists to perfect the techniques and widen the range of its applications.
منابع مشابه
Possibility of wine dating using the natural Pb-210 radioactive isotope.
To control the authenticity of an old wine without opening the bottle, we developed a few years ago a method based on the measurement of the (137)Cs activity. However, for recent vintages, the (137)Cs activity drops to far too low values (most of the time less than 10 mBq/L for a 10-year-old wine) for this method to perform correctly. In this paper we examine the possibility to date wines using...
متن کاملTime in the Geological past of Earth
1. Geological Time: A Summary 2. Reconstruction and Relative Dating of Earth History 2.1. Early Ideas and Basic Principles 2.2. Uniformitarianism and Catastrophism 2.3. Geological Catastrophes and Events: Particular Historical Geological Phenomena 2.4. Rates of Geological Processes in Terms of Human Timescales 2.4.1. Earth Crust Movements 2.4.2. Plutonic and Volcanic Processes 2.4.3. Weathering...
متن کاملHow Old Is It? How Do We Know? A Review of Dating Methods— Part Two: Radiometric Dating: Mineral, Isochron and Concordia Methods
W ithin a decade of the discovery of radioactivity in 1896, the chemical elements uranium, radium, polonium, and thorium were recognized as radioactive; the basic theory, mechanisms, and mathematics of radioactive decay were established; decay rates of some radioactive chemical elements were determined; and the ages of two mineral specimens were calculated for the first time from their uranium ...
متن کاملJohn Perry’s neglected critique of Kelvin’s age for the Earth: A missed opportunity in geodynamics
Many readers know the tale of how William Thomson (later Lord Kelvin) calculated the age of the Earth from physical principles and adhered for over 50 years to an estimate that was far younger than geologists’ estimates, despite the virtually unanimous opposition of the geological community of the time. The prevalent version of this tale alleges that the discovery of radioactivity simultaneousl...
متن کاملRadiometric Clocks
Introduction In the present nuclear age, the devastating effects of radioactivity have been highlighted by such issues as nuclear weapons testing and radioactive waste disposal, and by the reactor incidents at Three Mile Island and Chernobyl. These events illustrate the vexing problems that can be associated with high levels of radioactivity. However, the presence of radioactivity is not limite...
متن کامل