by From the exposure of art cases to the detection of the secrets of the Notre-Dame Cathedral, an impressive machine can turn the clock back outside of Paris to reveal the truth.
It uses a technique called Carbon Dating, which “revolutionized archeology” and won its discoverer in 1960, said French scientist Lucile Beck.
She spoke to AFP in front of the huge particle accelerator who takes an entire room in the Carbon dating laboratory of the French nuclear energy commission in Saclay, outside the capital.
Beck described the “surprise and unbelief” among the prehistorians in the nineties when the machine unveiled that the cave art in the Chauvet cave in southeast was 36,000 years old.
The laboratory uses a carbon dating, also called carbon-14, to determine the timeline of more than 3,000 samples per year.
– How does it work? – –
First, each rehearsal is examined for every pollution track.
“Typically, they are fibers of an archaeologist jumper who first handled the object, said Beck.
The rehearsal is then cleaned in an acid bath and heated to 800 degrees Celsius (1,472 Fahrenheit) to regain your carbon dioxide. This gas is then reduced into graphite and inserted into tiny capsules.
Next, these capsules are brought into the particle accelerator that separates their carbon isotopes.
Isotopes are variants of the same chemical element that have different number of neutrons.
Some isotopes are stable, such as carbon-12. Other and carbon-14-sind radioactive and expire over time.
Carbon-14 is constantly generated in the upper atmosphere of the earth, as cosmic rays and solar radiation bomb the chemical nitrogen.
In the atmosphere, this creates carbon dioxide that is absorbed by plants during the photosynthesis.
Then animals like us go into the plot by eating these plants.
All living organisms contain carbon-14, and when they die, it starts to fall for falling. Only half of them stay after 5,730 years.
After 50,000 years there is nothing left -this is the limit for how far the carbon dating of the carbon dating can be examined.
By comparing the number of carbon-12 and carbon-14 particles separated by the particle accelerator, scientists can maintain an estimate of the old how old is something.
Cosmic radiation is not constant, and the intensity of the magnetic field around the earth also protects us from her, said Beck.
This means that scientists have to make estimates that must be based on calculations using samples using samples whose age is definitely known.
All of this makes it possible to recognize a forged painting, for example by showing that the linen used in the canvas was harvested well after the death of the alleged painter.
The technology can also determine the changes in the climate of our planet over the millennia by analyzing the plankton’s skeleton on the bottom of the ocean.
– Notre -lady unveiled –
Carbon dating can be used for bones, wood and more, but the French laboratory has developed new methods that enable them to date materials that do not come directly from living organisms.
For example, you can date with the carbon that was locked in iron when his ore was heated by charcoal for the first time.
After the famous Notre-Dame-Cathedral of Paris almost burned to the ground in 2019, this method showed that the big iron farms were equipped for the first time when it was built for the first time-and not to a later restoration, as was assumed.
The technology can also analyze the Pigment Blow White, which has been the case since the fourth century BC.
To make this pigment, “lead with vinegar and horse POO was corroded, which was produced by fermentation carbon dioxide,” said Beck.
She said she always says archaeologists: “Do not clean traces of corrosion, they also tell about the past!”
Another trick made it possible to date the graves of a medieval abbey in which only small lead bottles had been found.
When the bodies were disintegrated in the graves, they left carbon dioxide free, corroded the bottles and gave scientists the hint that they needed.
“This corrosion was ultimately the only remaining proof of the spirit of the monks,” considered Beck.
BER/DL/JHB
