CARBON DATING

CARBON DATING

CONTEXT:

• The Allahabad High Court on Friday (May 12) ordered a “scientific survey”. including carbon dating, of a “Shivling” said to have been found at the Gyanvapi mosque complex in Varanasi .

WHAT IS CARBON DATING ?

• Carbon dating is a widely-used method to establish the age of organic materials, things that were once living.
• Living things have carbon in them in various forms.
• The dating method is based on the fact that Carbon-14 (C-14), an isotope of carbon with an atomic mass of 14, is radioactive, and decays at a well known rate.
• The most abundant isotope of carbon in the atmosphere is C-12.
• A very small amount of C-14 is also present.
• The ratio of C-12 to C-14 in the atmosphere is almost static, and is known.
• Plants get their carbon through photosynthesis; animals get it mainly through food.
• Because plants and animals get their carbon from the atmosphere, they too acquire C-12 and C-14 in roughly the same proportion as is available in the atmosphere.
• When they die, their interactions with the atmosphere stops.
• While C-12 is stable, the radioactive C-14 reduces to one half of itself in about 5,730 years known as its ‘half-life’.

• The changing ratio of C-12 to C-14 in the remains of a plant or animal after it dies can be measured, and can be used to deduce the approximate time when the organism died.

DATING OF NON-LIVING THINGS:

• Though extremely effective, carbon dating cannot be applied in all circumstances.
• It cannot be used to determine the age of non-living things like rocks.
• The age of things that are more than 40,000-50,000 years old cannot be arrived at through carbon dating.
• This is because after 8-10 cycles of half-lives, the amount of C-14 becomes almost very small and is almost undetectable.
• But there are other methods to calculate the age of inanimate things, many of which are based on the same principle as carbon dating.
• So, instead of carbon, decays of other radioactive elements that might be present in the material become the basis for the dating method.
• These are known as radiometric dating methods.
• Many of these involve elements with half-lives of billions of years, which enable scientists to reliably estimate the age of very old objects.
• Two commonly employed methods for dating rocks are potassium-argon dating and uranium-thorium-lead dating.
• The radioactive isotope of potassium decays into argon, and their ratios can give a clue about the age of rocks.
• Uranium and thorium have several radioactive isotopes, and all of them decay into the stable lead atom.
• The ratios of these elements present in the material can be measured and used to make estimates about age.

SYLLABUS: PRELIMS, SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY

SOURCE: THE INDIAN EXPRESS