Faster-Ticking Clock Indicates Early Solar System May Have Evolved Faster Than We Thought

ScienceDaily (May 1, 2012) — Our solar system is four and a half billion years old, but its formation may have occurred over a shorter period of time than we previously thought, says an international team of researchers from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and universities and laboratories in the US and Japan.

Solar system model. (Credit: iStockphoto/Baris Simsek)

Establishing chronologies of past events or determining ages of objects require having clocks that tick at different paces, according to how far back one looks. Nuclear clocks, used for dating, are based on the rate of decay of an atomic nucleus expressed by a half-life, the time it takes for half of a number of nuclei to decay, a property of each nuclear species.

MORE: http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/05/120501085506.htm

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