• Question: How do they date meteorites?

    Asked by Inquisitive Mind to Tom on 11 Mar 2015.
    • Photo: Thomas Barrett

      Thomas Barrett answered on 11 Mar 2015:

      There a loads of slightly different ways. Most of them involve measuring how much of two elements are in a particular mineral, one of which is radioactive and decays into the other. We can then use the ratio of one to the other and put it into an equation to find the date.

      This does however have the condition that the mineral must be closed off so none of the decay product escapes. If it does then we get the wrong date, however it is possible to tell if this has happened so we can try to correct for it.

      If you do physics at A level you will probably come across this kind of work.
      Here is a link if your really interested
      http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radiometric_dating

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