Before the twentieth century, determining the age of ancient artifacts was considered the job of archaeologists, not nuclear physicists. By comparing the placement of objects with the age of the rock and silt layers in which they were found,...

In the nineteenth century, prominent scientists such as Charles Lyell, Charles Darwin, Sir William Thomson (Lord Kelvin), and Thomas Huxley, were in continual debate about the age of the earth. The discovery of the radioactive properties of uranium in...

Radioactive dating is a technique which allows for accurate determination of the age of materials. The most common type of radioactive dating is called radiocarbon dating, which can be used to find the age of organic materials. A long-lived isotope of...

Radiometric dating (often called radioactive dating) is a technique used to date materials, usually based on a comparison between the observed abundance of a naturally occurring radioactive isotope and its decay products, using known decay rates.[1] It...