#carbon-14

[elementcattos]

[coolcabbagecat]

Radiocarbon (C-14) is really underrated and there should be some more fan art of her

[i1temporaryblissstateyt]

Radiomethane, the chubbier isotopologue of methane and she's a archaeologist

Gender: Female Personality: She is a rather intelligent catto who doesn't like to brag about stuff. She makes great fossil puns. She often tries to make romantic dates with fossils because of Carbon-14 in her being a habit. She is an archaeologist. She is more cleaner than her brother.

[whattolearntoday]

A bit of February 27th history...

1827 - 1st Mardis Gras celebration in New Orleans

1940 - Carbon-14 (radiocarbon dating) is discovered in California

1950 - General Chiang Kai-Shek elected president of Nationalist China (pictured)

1996 - 1st ever appearance of Pokemon in roleplaying video game “Pocket Monsters Red and Green” for game boy in Japan

2019 - Michael Cohen, a former lawyer to Trump, testifies before the House Oversight Committee saying Trump is “racist”, a “con man”, and “a cheat”

2020 - Biggest cosmic explosion ever detected from a supermassive black hole in Ophiuchus Galaxy 390 million light years away - size of 15 Milky Ways

[intelligentliving]

New High-Resolution Emissions Maps of America To Improve Policy-Making

The United States feels the wrath of extreme weather-related events resulting from global warming – from intense hurricanes in the Gulf of Mexico to raging wildfires in the West. Many cities, regions, and states across the country have been developing policies to reduce their emissions and, hopefully, abate the bombardment...

[startswithabang]

Carbon-14 Spiked Worldwide Over 1200 Years Ago, And The Sun Is To Blame

“Every so often, the Sun does eject energetic particles right in the direction of Earth. Sometimes the Earth's magnetic field deflects them away, other times it funnels these particles down into our atmosphere. When they arrive, they can create aurorae, disrupt our local magnetic fields, and — if we're technologically advanced — they can induce all sorts of current in our electrical grids and devices, potentially causing trillions of dollars worth of infrastructure damage.

We now know there are a variety of solar events that impact Earth, and that the largest-magnitude events we've experienced occur more than once-per-millennium. We cannot predict when the next one will arrive, but it's certain that the consequences for human society will be greater than they've ever been when it comes. Carbon-14 levels will certainly spike again in the future, but when that happens, a lot more than tree rings and ice cores will be affected. It's up to us, collectively, to decide how we'll prepare.”

Carbon-14, with a half-life of just a few thousand years, doesn’t survive very long here on Earth, at least on geological timescales. Yet carbon dating is a real thing, as cosmic rays lead to the creation of carbon-14 on an ongoing basis. This isotope gets created at a relatively steady rate, varying only by ~0.6% from year to year, typically. But in 774/5, some 1200+ years ago, carbon-14 levels spiked by 20 times the natural amount of variation, creating a puzzle for scientists to solve.

Well, we’ve found the solution, and it isn’t due to black holes, pulsars, or a gamma-ray burst, but our plain old Sun. Here’s how we solved the mystery.

[earthstory]

Carbon Dating Dinos: It just doesn’t work

I have a bit of a pet peeve; it's films perpetuating the misconception that you can carbon date dinosaurs. I recently watched Transformers: Age of Extinction (not exactly renowned for its science, but still) and was disappointed when the lead scientist excitedly claims they have dated the dinosaur “remains” to 70ma using carbon dating.

My brother who was sat watching with me made a very good point: if dinosaurs contain carbon why can’t you carbon date them?

During an organisms life, it takes both carbon-12 and carbon-14 into its structure during either photosynthesis or through the food it eats. The ratio of carbon-12 to carbon-14 reflects that of the atmosphere at the time it was formed, and so we can make an approximation that initial ratio of these 2 is known when the organism is alive. Knowing the initial isotope ratio lets scientists do a bit of math to solve for the age of the organism once they measure the ratio of carbon 14 to carbon 12 in older, buried carbon.

Once the organism dies the carbon-14 (unstable parent atom) begins to break down (decay) back to nitrogen-14 (stable daughter atom) at a constant rate called the parent atom’s ‘half life’. This is the time is takes for half of the radioactive material to decay, roughly 5,700 years for carbon-14. By dividing the samples current percentage of carbon-14 with the initial percentage, you can work out how many half lives the material has undergone and therefore how old it is. However, it is generally unreliable to date any material that has undergone more than 10 half lives and therefore this method of dating cannot be used on anything older than 60,000 years (possibly 100,000 years with the very latest technology).

As dinosaurs are much older than 60,000 – 100,000 years it is impossible for carbon dating to calculate the age of any remains. However, there are other radiogenic isotopes that can be used that have much longer half lives - for example, the uranium 238 decay series has a half life of 4.5 billion years and therefore it can be used to precisely date rocks that are as old as the solar system itself.

Watson

Image Credit: Reuters Reference: http://science.howstuffworks.com/environmental/earth/geology/carbon-142.htm Further Reading: https://www.mnh.si.edu/exhibits/backyard-dinosaurs/questions-answers.cfm?know=a24

[archaeologicalnews]

A Crucial Archaeological Dating Tool Is Wrong, And It Could Change History as We Know It

One of the most important dating tools used in archaeology may sometimes give misleading data, new study shows - and it could change whole historical timelines as a result.

The discrepancy is due to significant fluctuations in the amount of carbon-14 in the atmosphere, and it could force scientists to rethink how they use ancient organic remains to measure the passing of time.

A comparison of radiocarbon ages across the Northern Hemisphere suggests we might have been a little too hasty in assuming how the isotope - also known as radiocarbon - diffuses, potentially shaking up controversial conversations on the timing of events in history. 

By measuring the amount of carbon-14 in the annual growth rings of trees grown in southern Jordan, researchers have found some dating calculations on events in the Middle East – or, more accurately, the Levant – could be out by nearly 20 years. Read more.