Dating can be full of surprises. In the social kind, one can learn about all sorts of unexpected things about a potential partner. In the scientific type, sometimes strange, unexplained phenomena comes to light.
The latter was the case for a group of scientists, who found twice as much Beryllium-10 in the Pacific seabed then expected. This anomaly could shift our understanding of cosmic phenomenon that affect the Earth and also help recalibrate scientific dating techniques, they report in Nature Communications.
Dominik Koll, a postdoctoral researcher with TUD Dresden University of Technology, was searching for signs of stardust in the ferromanganese crust at the bottom of the Pacific Ocean. Instead, he noticed an anomaly: an accumulation of twice as much Beryllium-10 (10Be) dating back 10 million years than expected.
The rare radioactive isotope produced by cosmic rays in the atmosphere, is used to date objects millions of years old, because ...
