Mangaluru varsity establishes Carbon-14 courting of archaeological artefacts

Mangaluru, Oct 22: The Centre for Advanced Research in Environmental Radioactivity (CARER) at Mangalore University has established a facility for Carbon-14 courting of archaeological artefacts or materials of biogenic origin primarily based on Liquid Scintillation Counting approach.

Carbon-14 courting is a technique for figuring out the age of an object containing natural materials by utilizing the properties of radiocarbon, a radioactive isotope of carbon. The methodology was developed within the late 1940s at the University of Chicago by Willard Libby, who won the Nobel Prize in Chemistry for this work in 1960.

Measuring the quantity of Carbon-14 in a pattern from a useless plant or animal, equivalent to a bit of wooden or a fraction of bone, offers data that can be utilized to calculate when the animal or plant died, according to a release by the University on Thursday.

This facility has been established with financial assistance by the Board of Research in Nuclear Sciences (BRNS), Department of Atomic Energy (DAE). Through an analysis challenge sanctioned and in collaboration with Bhabha Atomic Research Centre (BARC), Mumbai, the CARER had undertaken a research for standardising the strategy for Carbon-14 measurements within the neighborhood of nuclear energy vegetation.

A staff of scientists led by N Karunakara, a professor and coordinator, CARER, in collaboration with BARC has standardised a batch methodology for the thermal combustion of the samples by tube furnace system for Carbon-14 measurements. The spin-off utility of this methodology is its utility for figuring out the age of the fabric as much as 30,000 years outdated, the discharge issued by Ok. Raju Mogaveera, Registrar (Administration), stated.

The CARER with state-of-the-art services has been established by the college as a nationwide facility. This is a complicated centre for radioecological and radiation safety analysis within the nation with collaborations with many superior laboratories of the world. The centre is serving the analysis wants of varied analysis teams from nationwide laboratories/establishments/universities.