Dating methods for the age of the earth

Dating > Dating methods for the age of the earth

Radiometric dating is a method which scientists use to determine the age of various specimens, mainly inorganic matter rocks, etc. How do these dating techniques work? Uranium-238 U238for example, is an unstable radioactive isotope which decays into Lead-206 Pb206 naturally over time it goes through 13 unstable intermediate stages before it dating methods for the age of the earth stabilizes ag Pb206. In this particular case, it takes 4,460,000,000 years for half of a sample of U238 to decay into Pb206. The measurements involved can be quite accurate. The question is what are the underlying key assumptions and how reliable are they? If any of these assumptions are wrong, the method cannot accurately determine the age of a specimen. While the aeg and third assumptions have always been a bit troublesome, especially the third assumption, which considers the original constitution of a particular specimen, the first assumption was thought to be a pretty safe bet since scientists were not able to vary the decay rates much in a lab. Recently, however, new research has revealed that the decay rates may have been drastically different in the unobservable past. This calls the whole method into question. Certain crystals methlds zircons, obtained from drilling into very deep granites, contain uranium which has partly decayed into lead. This is at first glance surprising for long-agers, because of the ease with which one would expect helium with its tiny, light, unreactive atoms to escape from the spaces within the crystal structure. There should surely be hardly any left, because with such a slow buildup, it should be seeping out continually and not accumulating. In other words, in only a few thousand years, 1. The point is that radiometric dating is not the sure thing that te has been made out forr be over the last eating />There still remains a lot of research to do, but, as it currently stands, the accuracy of radiometric dating remains ambiguously suspect at best.

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