How radioactive dating works

What Is Radiometric Dating, and How Does It Work?

By Trisha Muro. January 10, at am. You discover a fossilized bone and want to know how old it is. Maybe those clues tell you that the rocks are somewhere between 30, and 50, years old. Fortunately, the science of radioactive dating can offer a more precise measuring tool for the bone itself. All the elements on the periodic table have isotopes. Scientists know of stable, non-radioactive isotopes. Some isotopes occur naturally. Others emerge only under special conditions in a lab. Some natural isotopes, and all lab-made isotopes, are unstable — they are radioactive.

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Radioactive dating , also known as radiometric dating or radioisotope dating, is a technique used to date materials such as rocks, fossils, and artifacts by measuring the amounts of radioactive isotopes and their decay products in the material. The use of radiometric dating was first published in 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 the Earth itself, and can be used to date a wide range of natural and man-made materials. To date a material using radioactive dating, scientists first need to choose an appropriate radioactive isotope. The isotope must be present in the sample, and it must have a half-life that is appropriate for the age of the sample.

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Radiometric dating of rocks and minerals using naturally occurring, long-lived radioactive isotopes is troublesome for young-earth creationists because the techniques have provided overwhelming evidence of the antiquity of the earth and life. Some so-called creation scientists have attempted to show that radiometric dating does not work on theoretical grounds for example, Arndts and Overn ; Gill but such attempts invariably have fatal flaws see Dalrymple ; York and Dalrymple Other creationists have focused on instances in which radiometric dating seems to yield incorrect results. In most instances, these efforts are flawed because the authors have misunderstood or misrepresented the data they attempt to analyze for example, Woodmorappe ; Morris HM ; Morris JD Only rarely does a creationist actually find an incorrect radiometric result Austin ; Rugg and Austin that has not already been revealed and discussed in the scientific literature.

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What is radiometric dating?

This page has been archived and is no longer updated. Despite seeming like a relatively stable place, the Earth's surface has changed dramatically over the past 4. Mountains have been built and eroded, continents and oceans have moved great distances, and the Earth has fluctuated from being extremely cold and almost completely covered with ice to being very warm and ice-free. These changes typically occur so slowly that they are barely detectable over the span of a human life, yet even at this instant, the Earth's surface is moving and changing.

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