A radioactive clock hidden within all living things has revolutionized our ability to solve historical mysteries, identify modern crimes, and understand climate change.
The discovery that carbon-14 decays at a predictable rate after death has created an invaluable tool for dating organic materials across millennia.
The technique originated with chemist Willard Libby's mid-1940s investigation into methane gas from Baltimore sewage, where he first detected naturally occurring carbon-14.
Scientist subsequent research proved that cosmic rays constantly produce this radioactive isotope in the atmosphere, which plants and animals absorb while alive.
Upon death, this absorption stops and the carbon-14 begins decaying at a known rate, creating a natural timestamp.
"This is a problem where you won't tell anybody what you're doing. It's too crazy," Libby later recalled of his early work.
“His radical concept earned him the 1960 Nobel Prize in Chemistry after he successfully dated artifacts including the Dead Sea Scrolls and Egyptian royal artifacts nearly 4,000 years old,” the Reuters reported.
Modern laboratories like Oxford's Radiocarbon Accelerator Unit now analyze materials ranging from human bones to fossilized bat urine using advanced mass spectrometers that require only milligram samples.
The technology has resolved historical disputes, such as confirming that skeletal remains discovered in 1823 Wales actually dated back 33,000-34,000 years, Britain's oldest known human burial.
Forensic applications have proven equally transformative through the "bomb pulse" method, which measures carbon-14 spikes from Cold War nuclear testing.
This enables precise dating of materials from the mid-20th century onward, helping identify missing persons like Laura Ann O'Malley, whose remains were confirmed through radiocarbon dating decades after her 1975 disappearance.
