{"id":23830,"date":"2023-02-28T17:03:00","date_gmt":"2023-02-28T22:03:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/mascolombia.com\/how-do-you-know-the-age-of-an-ancient-organism-carbon-14-is-the-key-answer\/"},"modified":"2023-07-05T18:53:34","modified_gmt":"2023-07-05T23:53:34","slug":"how-do-you-know-the-age-of-an-ancient-organism-carbon-14-is-the-key-answer","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mascolombia.com\/en\/how-do-you-know-the-age-of-an-ancient-organism-carbon-14-is-the-key-answer\/","title":{"rendered":"How do you know the age of an ancient organism? Carbon 14 is the key answer"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p><strong>Nature leaves its traces in the form of isotopes. In today\u2019s column, Sara Abril explains carbon-14, a biology tool used to determine the age of organic samples.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<iframe title=\"\u00bfC\u00f3mo se conoce la edad de un organismo antiguo? en el carbono 14 estar\u00eda la clave\" width=\"500\" height=\"281\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/kqfXWukxc_w?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe>\n\n\n\n<blockquote class=\"wp-block-quote is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow\">\n<p>More from this columnist: <a href=\"https:\/\/mascolombia.com\/en\/stomach-diseases-more-than-500000-people-die-each-year-from-this-cause\/\"><strong>Stomach diseases: more than 500,000 people die each year from this cause<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n<p>Radioactive carbon 14 isotope, a very important tool in biology, is the most reliable technique to detect the age of organic samples older than 50 thousand years.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Let us remember that isotopes are atoms of the same element but with different atomic mass. They differ from each other by the number of neutrons.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Isotopes can be stable, remaining stable over time, or unstable, which degrade or decay and become particles or radiation: these are the radioactive isotopes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Carbon 14 is a radioactive isotope of carbon. Carbon always has six protons, but it can have six neutrons, as is the case with carbon 12, which is one of the stable isotopes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>In the case of carbon 14, which has 8 neutrons, it is unstable, decays to nitrogen 14 and emits beta radiation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<blockquote class=\"wp-block-quote is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow\">\n<p>You may also read: <a href=\"https:\/\/mascolombia.com\/en\/the-power-of-social-media\/\"><strong>The power of social media<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n<p>Carbon 14 is naturally in the atmosphere mixed with carbon 12 in different proportions throughout history.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>When organisms photosynthesize, they acquire that same proportion of carbon-14 and maintain it until they die. However, when they die, the isotope decays, emits beta radiation, converts to nitrogen 14 and decreases in concentration.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>We know that an organism decreases its amount of carbon-14 by half in about 5,700 years. If the radiation is also measured, the time at which the organism died can be determined: this is called radiocarbon dating and is done especially for plants and photosynthetic organisms, but it is also useful for animals because they consume plants.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>This development earned Willard Frank Libby the Nobel Prize in chemistry in 1960.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<blockquote class=\"wp-block-quote is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow\">\n<p>Read more:<a href=\"https:\/\/mascolombia.com\/en\/it-was-a-plastic-girl\/\"><strong> It was a plastic girl<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Nature leaves its traces in the form of isotopes. In today\u2019s column, Sara Abril explains carbon-14, a biology tool used to determine the age of organic samples. More from this columnist: Stomach diseases: more than 500,000 people die each year from this cause Radioactive carbon 14 isotope, a very important tool in biology, is the [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":185,"featured_media":22904,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"rank_math_focus_keyword":"carbon 14","rank_math_title":"","rank_math_description":"","rank_math_primary_category":"752","footnotes":""},"categories":[752],"tags":[798],"mc_distribution":[],"class_list":["post-23830","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-columnists","tag-video-en"],"acf":[],"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mascolombia.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23830","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mascolombia.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mascolombia.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mascolombia.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/185"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mascolombia.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=23830"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mascolombia.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23830\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mascolombia.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/22904"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mascolombia.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=23830"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mascolombia.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=23830"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mascolombia.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=23830"},{"taxonomy":"mc_distribution","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mascolombia.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/mc_distribution?post=23830"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}