[ RadSafe ] 4.4 billion year old crystal

[KARAM, PHILIP]

The best book I've found for non-geologists is called "The Age of the Earth" by Dalrymple (he helped develop many isotopic methods). Dalrymple was called as an expert witness in many evolution/creationism cases and he wrote this book to summarize why he, as a scientist, is compelled to view the Earth as ancient. He describes all of the major isotopic dating methods in very lucid detail, as well as discussing meteorites and lunar rocks.

The best book overall on isotope geology was written by my MS advisor, Gunter Faure, and is called "Principles of Isotope Geology." This is written as a textbook for advanced undergrad and grad students so it's a little more involved than Dalrymple's book, but it also gets into many of the details mentioned here. And since it's less than 10 years old it is fairly recent.

With respect to the U-Pb dating method, the discussion presented earlier seems to capture the major points - about the only thing missing is that geochronologists will use both U-238/Pb-206 and U-235/Pb-207 methods to date a rock. By having two chemically similar systems with two different half-lives one can correct for the possible loss of radon from the crystals (if I am remembering correctly - it's been awhile).

Andy

-----Original Message-----
From: radsafe-bounces at health.phys.iit.edu [mailto:radsafe-bounces at health.phys.iit.edu] On Behalf Of JPreisig at aol.com
Sent: Thursday, February 27, 2014 1:53 PM
To: radsafe at health.phys.iit.edu
Subject: Re: [ RadSafe ] 4.4 billion year old crystal

Radsafe,
 
      Google     accelerator  mass spectrometry    and/or
 
                      tandem accelerator mass spectrometry     also.
 
 
                    Joe Preisig
 
 
 
 
In a message dated 2/27/2014 12:33:34 P.M. Eastern Standard Time,  
phils at umich.edu writes:

Jeffery,

The a web search of the general term  “geochronology” will give you links 
to more information about dating rocks  than you probably ever wanted.

Phil Simpson
Assistant Reactor  Manager (Retired)
University of Michigan
Ford Nuclear  Reactor


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