News tagged with radiocarbon
Germany may be birthplace of European music and art
The remains of the world's oldest musical instruments and human figurines suggest that music and artistic depictions of the human form may have first developed in Germany around 40,000 years ago, say researchers.
Other Sciences / Archaeology & Fossils
May 29, 2012 |
3.9 / 5 (7) |
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Oldest Jewish archaeological evidence on the Iberian Peninsula
German archaeologists of the Friedrich Schiller University Jena found one of the oldest archaeological evidence so far of Jewish Culture on the Iberian Peninsula at an excavation site in the south of Portugal, ...
Other Sciences / Archaeology & Fossils
May 25, 2012 |
4.2 / 5 (6) |
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Otago researchers delve into enigmatic burial rituals
University of Otago researchers working in remote Cambodian mountains are shedding new light on the lost history of an unidentified people by studying their enigmatic burial rituals.
Other Sciences / Archaeology & Fossils
May 09, 2012 |
4 / 5 (1) |
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In log coffins, first glimpses of a mysterious Asian people
(Phys.org) -- Dendrochronologist Brendan Buckley’s usual occupation is drilling straw-like cores from old trees and extracting information about past climates by studying their rings. To extend the ...
Space & Earth / Earth Sciences
May 09, 2012 |
4.5 / 5 (4) |
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Glastonbury Abbey excavations reveal Saxon glass industry
(Phys.org) -- New research led by the University of Reading has revealed that finds at Glastonbury Abbey provide the earliest archaeological evidence of glass-making in Britain.
Other Sciences / Archaeology & Fossils
May 08, 2012 |
4 / 5 (4) |
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Rock analysis suggests France cave art is 'oldest'
Experts have long debated whether the sophisticated animal drawings in a famous French cave are indeed the oldest of their kind in the world, and a study out Monday suggests that yes, they are.
Other Sciences / Archaeology & Fossils
May 07, 2012 |
4.8 / 5 (17) |
3
Research reveals first evidence of hunting by prehistoric Ohioans
Cut marks found on Ice Age bones indicate that humans in Ohio hunted or scavenged animal meat earlier than previously known. Dr. Brian Redmond, curator of archaeology at The Cleveland Museum of Natural History, was lead author ...
Other Sciences / Archaeology & Fossils
Mar 01, 2012 |
5 / 5 (3) |
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Geological evidence for past earthquakes in Tokyo region
In 1923, a magnitude 7.9 earthquake devastated the Tokyo area, resulting in more than 100,000 deaths. About 200 years earlier, in 1703, a magnitude 8.2 earthquake struck the same region, causing more than 10,000 deaths.
Space & Earth / Earth Sciences
Jan 31, 2012 |
3 / 5 (1) |
1
New study may answer questions about enigmatic Little Ice Age
A new University of Colorado Boulder-led study appears to answer contentious questions about the onset and cause of Earth's Little Ice Age, a period of cooling temperatures that began after the Middle Ages ...
Space & Earth / Earth Sciences
Jan 30, 2012 |
4.8 / 5 (8) |
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Dog skull dates back 33,000 years
If you think a Chihuahua doesn't have much in common with a Rottweiler, you might be on to something.
Other Sciences / Archaeology & Fossils
Jan 23, 2012 |
4.7 / 5 (15) |
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Researchers unearth ancient bronze artifact in Alaska
(PhysOrg.com) -- A team of researchers led by the University of Colorado Boulder recently discovered the first prehistoric bronze artifact made from a cast ever found in Alaska, a small, buckle-like object ...
Other Sciences / Archaeology & Fossils
Jan 05, 2012 |
5 / 5 (3) |
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The interplay of dancing electrons
Negative ions play an important role in everything from how our bodies function to the structure of the universe. Scientists from the University of Gothenburg, Sweden, have now developed a new method that makes it possible ...
Nov 29, 2011 |
4 / 5 (4) |
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Industrialization weakens important carbon sink
Australian scientists have reconstructed the past six thousand years in estuary sedimentation records to look for changes in plant and algae abundance. Their findings, published in Global Change Biology, show a ...
Nov 29, 2011 |
5 / 5 (1) |
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Ancient bronze artifact from East Asia unearthed at Alaska archaeology site
A team of researchers led by the University of Colorado Boulder has discovered the first prehistoric bronze artifact made from a cast ever found in Alaska, a small, buckle-like object found in an ancient Eskimo ...
Other Sciences / Archaeology & Fossils
Nov 14, 2011 |
4.8 / 5 (11) |
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Homo sapiens arrived in Europe earlier than previously believed
Members of our species (Homo sapiens) arrived in Europe several millennia earlier than previously thought. At this conclusion a team of researchers, led by the Department of Anthropology, University of Vie ...
Other Sciences / Archaeology & Fossils
Nov 02, 2011 |
4.4 / 5 (10) |
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Carbon-14
Carbon-14, 14C, or radiocarbon, is a radioactive isotope of carbon discovered on February 27, 1940, by Martin Kamen and Sam Ruben at the University of California Radiation Laboratory in Berkeley, though its existence had been suggested already in 1934 by Franz Kurie. Its nucleus contains 6 protons and 8 neutrons. Its presence in organic materials is the basis of the radiocarbon dating method to date archaeological, geological, and hydrogeological samples.
There are three naturally occurring isotopes of carbon on Earth: 99% of the carbon is carbon-12, 1% is carbon-13, and carbon-14 occurs in trace amounts, e.g. making up as much as 1 part per trillion (0.0000000001%) of the carbon in the atmosphere. The half-life of carbon-14 is 5,730±40 years. It decays into nitrogen-14 through beta decay. The activity of the modern radiocarbon standard is about 14 disintegrations per minute (dpm) per gram carbon.
The atomic mass of carbon-14 is about 14.003241 amu. The different isotopes of carbon do not differ appreciably in their chemical properties. This is used in chemical research in a technique called carbon labeling: some carbon-12 atoms of a given compound are replaced with carbon-14 atoms (or some carbon-13 atoms) in order to trace them along chemical reactions involving the given compound.
For more information about Carbon-14, read the full article at
Wikipedia.
This text uses material from Wikipedia and is available under the GNU Free Documentation License.
