The radionuclide 14C (half-life 5730 years) is produced continuously in the Earth's atmosphere by the interaction of cosmic rays with its constituents. The 14C atoms formed are mixed with stable carbon in the atmosphere and are dispersed globally through exchange and biogeochemical cycles on time scales much shorter than its half-life. The carbon compounds formed in equilibrium with the atmospheric carbon and become labeled with 14C, making 14C a universal constituent of all living forms. When they are isolated from the source of 14C, their 14C content decreases due to radioactive decay. This is the basis of radiocarbon (14C) dating.
Since the discovery of natural 14C by Libby in 1947, extensive studies of its distribution in nature (Anderson et al., 1947; Libby, 1952; Oeschger, 1982) have established its usefulness both as a clock and as a tracer to quantify the magnitude and rate of exchange of carbon between the various surficial reservoirs of the Earth, namely the atmosphere,...
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Lal, D., Krishnaswami, S. (1998). Carbon-14 dating and other applications in earth sciences. In: Geochemistry. Encyclopedia of Earth Science. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/1-4020-4496-8_43
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