Hjow is radioactive dating performed

20-Feb-2020 23:29

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One way to think about the closed system of the crystal is to compare it to an hourglass.The grains of sand in the top half of the hourglass are the radioactive parents, and those falling to the bottom are the stable daughters.Ideally, the mineral crystals in igneous rocks form a closed system--nothing leaves or enters the crystal once it is formed.This means that as radioactive parent elements decay, they and their daughters are trapped together inside the crystal.Over time, radioactive isotopes change into stable isotopes by a process known as radioactive decay.Some radioactive parent isotopes decay almost instantaneously into their stable daughter isotopes; others take billions of years.

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Radiometric dating has shown that very old rocks--3.5 billion years or older--occur on all the continents.

We know the Earth must be at least as old as any rock on it.