Carbon dating practice questions dating ideas for teenagers at night
09-Sep-2020 17:12
Uranium 234, a radioactive element present in the environment, slowly decays to form thorium 230.Using a mass spectrometer, an instrument that accelerates streams of atoms and uses magnets to sort them out according to mass and electric charge, the group has learned to measure the ratio of uranium to thorium very precisely.According to carbon dating of fossil animals and plants, the spreading and receding of great ice sheets lagged behind orbital changes by several thousand years, a delay that scientists found hard to explain. The group theorizes that large errors in carbon dating result from fluctuations in the amount of carbon 14 in the air.Changes in the Earth's magnetic field would change the deflection of cosmic-ray particles streaming toward the Earth from the Sun.
Therefore they have sought ways to calibrate and correct the carbon dating method.The best gauge they have found is dendrochronology: the measurement of age by tree rings.