Physics Question of the Day

Test your knowledge with a hand-picked multiple-choice question.

Radiocarbon dating is a method that allows scientists to estimate the age of organisms after they have died. A fairly constant amount of radioactive remains in the animal while alive, but once it dies the degrades over time into . By measuring the relative amount of these two in a dead organism compared to a living one, along with knowing that the half-life of is years, it can be determined how long ago the organism died.

If a scientist finds that a fossil contains amount of the normally found in the atmosphere at that time, approximately how old is this fossil?

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