COSMOS khichdi/highlights/revision/cheat sheet.

[Southie]

Re: COSMOS khichdi/highlights/revision/cheat sheet.

@TLK

Sorry for cutting and pasting off Google, but this explains in a much better and simpler way.

As Patterson explained in an interview in the year that he died, the Canyon Diablo meteorites didn’t contain any uranium, a metal that radioactively decays into lead at well-established rates taking hundreds of millions of years. Other rocks contained both lead and uranium.
So, by reporting the ratio of lead types found in these pristine meteorites and comparing them to lead ratios found in the other rocks on the Earth and other meteorites, Patterson could calculate the age of the solar system, when the Earth formed, to be 4.55 billion years old, give or take 70 million years.

I think cutting and pasting Google is a good way. No issues.

What is Canyon Diablo meteorite. Is this the pristine meteorite Patterson tested. So which means all had converted to pb. But we don’t know when it happened. So how to calculate age.

What is meant by ratio of lead types.