Radioisotope dating with accelerators
DOI: 10.1063/1.2995406
A new method of detecting radioactive isotopes promises to have a revolutionary impact on the field of radioisotope dating. The technique, which was developed over the past two and a half years, consists of counting individual atoms of radioactive isotopes that have been ionized, accelerated to high energies, and then selected and identified. By detecting all—or a substantial fraction—of the atoms in the beam, this method has much greater sensitivity than the standard method, which detects only the tiny fraction of the atoms that decay during the counting period. The new “direct detection” method therefore will allow one to use much smaller samples and to measure much greater ages than the older “decay detection” method.
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More about the authors
Richard A. Muller, University of California, Berkeley.
