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How We Know The Age Of The Earth? (Video)

Monday, October 30, 2017 18:17

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The Earth is 4.565 billion years old, give or take a few million years. How do scientists know that? Since there’s no “established in” plaque stuck in a cliff somewhere, geologists deduced the age of the Earth thanks to a handful of radioactive elements. With radiometric dating, scientists can put an age on really old rocks — and even good old Mother Earth. For the 30th anniversary of National Chemistry Week, this edition of Reactions describes how scientists date rocks:

Credit: ACSReactions

Radiometric dating or radioactive dating is a technique used to date materials such as rocks or carbon, in which trace radioactive impurities were selectively incorporated when they were formed. The method compares the abundance of a naturally occurring radioactive isotope within the material to the abundance of its decay products, which form at a known constant rate of decay.

The use of radiometric dating was first published in 1907 by Bertram Boltwood and is now the principal source of information about the absolute age of rocks and other geological features, including the age of fossilized life forms or the age of the Earth itself, and can also be used to date a wide range of natural and man-made materials.

Example of a radioactive decay chain from lead-212 (²¹²Pb) to lead-208 (²⁰⁸Pb) . Each parent nuclide spontaneously decays into a daughter nuclide (the decay product) via an α decay or a β⁻ decay. The final decay product, lead-208 (²⁰⁸Pb), is stable and can no longer undergo spontaneous radioactive decay.

Credit: , Eugene Alvin Villar (seav) / Wikimedia Commons

Together with stratigraphic principles, radiometric dating methods are used in geochronology to establish the geologic time scale. Among the best-known techniques are radiocarbon dating, potassium–argon dating and uranium–lead dating. By allowing the establishment of geological timescales, it provides a significant source of information about the ages of fossils and the deduced rates of evolutionary change. Radiometric dating is also used to date archaeological materials, including ancient artifacts.

Different methods of radiometric dating vary in the timescale over which they are accurate and the materials to which they can be applied.

Contacts and sources:
Katie Cottingham, Ph.D.
American Chemical Society

Source: http://www.ineffableisland.com/2017/10/how-we-know-age-of-earth-video.html

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