Uranium isotopes reveal age and origin of volcanic rocks
Tuesday, January 20, 2015 - 07:30
in Paleontology & Archaeology
From the beginning of time, uranium has been part of the Earth and, thanks to its long-lived radioactivity, it has proven ideal to date geological processes and deduce Earth's evolution. Natural uranium consists of two long-lived isotopes uranium-238 and the lighter uranium-235. A new study of the global cycle of these uranium isotopes brings additional perspectives to the debate on how the Earth has changed over billions of years as revealed in a recently published study in the journal Nature.