How do you date objects?

How do you date objects?

 

How do you date Meteorites

 

Decay Constant

We’ve done half-life as a way of understanding radioactive decay

• Another way is the use of the term, Gamma
• It’s done in the units of yr-1
• Measured in terrestrial labs

 

¹⁴⁷₆₂Sm -> ¹⁴³₆₀Nd + ⁴₂He (the latter is usually called a alpha particle)

Unstable Isotopes

These enable us to date substances. If you were going to date a meteorite you would use many different approaches for dating to get a mean age. This is more of something that was done in the past, these days we’ve improved the dating calculations so that most of them now return the same age