What is radiometric dating and how is it used

RADIOMETRIC TIME SCALE

Internet Explorer is no longer supported. Try downloading another browser like Chrome or Firefox. If you already have an account, Sign in. Once you understand the basic science, however, you can see how wrong assumptions lead to incorrect dates. This three-part series will help you properly understand radiometric dating, the assumptions that lead to inaccurate dates, and the clues about what really happened in the past. Most people think that radioactive dating has proven the earth is billions of years old. After all, textbooks, media, and museums glibly present ages of millions of years as fact. Yet few people know how radiometric dating works or bother to ask what assumptions drive the conclusions. Each chemical element, such as carbon and oxygen, consists of atoms. Each atom is thought to be made up of three basic parts.

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Radiometric dating , radioactive dating or radioisotope dating is a technique which is 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. Together with stratigraphic principles , radiometric dating methods are used in geochronology to establish the geologic time scale. 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.

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Dating Rocks and Fossils Using Geologic Methods

Cosmos » Earth. But how is it dated? What does radiometric dating actually mean?

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