Radiometric Dating Atom Decay and Half-Life Simulation.Click Link: Alpha Particles = 2 protons and 2 neutrons bonded together into a particle identical to a helium nucleus.Eventually, the salt water will eat through the steel and release the Plutonium (which, as you know, is quite lethal.) They usually talk about either trying to raise the sub or encase it in concrete where it rests. That's why we are called "Carbon-based life forms." Man, I've really watched too much Star Trek.)Scientists use Carbon-14 to make a guess at how old some things are -- things that used to be alive like people, animals, wood and natural cloths. Anyway, they make an estimate of how much Carbon-14 would have been in the thing when it died...The last figure I heard was that there are currently eight nuclear subs on our ocean floors. It doesn't work for sea creatures and other things that are under water. Then they measure how much is left in the specimen when they find it. Together with stratigraphic principles, radiometric dating methods are used in geochronology to establish the geological time scale.Among the best-known techniques are radiocarbon dating, potassium-argon dating and uranium-lead dating.Play a game that tests your ability to match the percentage of the dating element that remains to the age of the object.

This is why it is such a big concern when a nuclear submarine sinks... (By the way, you are mostly Carbon-12, which is not radioactive.

We are told that of all the radiometric dates that are measured, only a few percent are anomalous.

This gives us the impression that all but a small percentage of the dates computed by radiometric methods agree with the assumed ages of the rocks in which they are found, and that all of these various methods almost always give ages that agree with each other to within a few percentage points.

On the surface, radiometric dating methods appear to give powerful support to the statement that life has existed on the earth for hundreds of millions, even billions, of years.

We are told that these methods are accurate to a few percent, and that there are many different methods.