Why is 14C a poor isotope to choose for measuring the ages of planetary surfaces?

Question

List some other radioactive isotopes that might serve as better clocks for datin planetary surfaces

Answer 1

Carbon 14 won't work for planetary surfaces because the half life is only 6000 years.

These days Potassium-Argon and Argon-Argon dating are the methods of choice for geologists. Contamination tends to be less of a problem with this technique, since the argon will mostly bubble out of the rock before it solidifies. It also has a built-in sanity check, since you can use the full chain of 40K -> 40Ar -> 39Ar to get multiple estimates.

It's mostly for things 100,000 years old or more, but has been used on artifacts only a few thousand years old with good results.

You can read an overview here: http://www.ees.nmt.edu/Geol/labs/Argon_Lab/Methods/Methods.html

Answer 2

Why don't you Google for it? C14 only takes you back a few tens of thousands of years. Using isotopes of Uranium works much better, but check out geological radio isotope dating on Wikipedia and Google.

Answer 3

Because it makes those silly creationists look good.