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Radiometric dating of minerals and rocks was pioneered by Ernest Rutherford (1906) and Bertram Boltwood (1907). [ 2 ] [ 3 ] Radiometric dating 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 Earth itself, and can also be used to ...
[2] [3] [4] Two or more radiometric methods can be used in concert to achieve more robust results. [5] Most radiometric methods are suitable for geological time only, but some such as the radiocarbon method and the 40 Ar/ 39 Ar dating method can be extended into the time of early human life [6] and into recorded history. [7]
Prior to the discovery of radiometric dating in the early 20th century, which provided a means of absolute dating, archaeologists and geologists used relative dating to determine ages of materials. Though relative dating can only determine the sequential order in which a series of events occurred, not when they occurred, it remains a useful ...
Other radiometric dating techniques are available for earlier periods. One of the most widely used is potassium–argon dating (K–Ar dating). Potassium-40 is a radioactive isotope of potassium that decays into argon-40. The half-life of potassium-40 is 1.3 billion years, far longer than that of carbon-14, allowing much older samples to be dated.
Geochronology is the scientific branch of geology that aims to determine the age of rocks, fossils, and sediments either through absolute (e.g., radiometric dating) or relative means (e.g., stratigraphic position, paleomagnetism, stable isotope ratios). Geochronometry is the field of geochronology that numerically quantifies geologic time. [16]
Isochron dating is a common technique of radiometric dating and is applied to date certain events, such as crystallization, metamorphism, shock events, and differentiation of precursor melts, in the history of rocks. Isochron dating can be further separated into mineral isochron dating and whole rock isochron dating; both techniques are applied ...
Uranium–lead dating, abbreviated U–Pb dating, is one of the oldest [1] and most refined of the radiometric dating schemes. It can be used to date rocks that formed and crystallised from about 1 million years to over 4.5 billion years ago with routine precisions in the 0.1–1 percent range. [2] [3] The method is usually applied to zircon.
Radiometric dating is how geologist determine the age of a rock. In a closed system, the amount of radiogenic isotopes present in a sample is a direct function of time and the decay rate of the mineral. [2]