The Centre for Advanced Research in Environmental Radioactivity (CARER) at Mangalore University has established a facility for Carbon-14 dating of archaeological artefacts or material of biogenic origin.

A press release by Mangalore University said on Thursday this facility has been established through financial support from the Board of Research in Nuclear Sciences (BRNS) of the Department of Atomic Energy.

Through a research project sanctioned by BRNS and with collaboration with Bhabha Atomic Research Centre (BARC), Mumbai, the CARER had undertaken a study for standardising method for Carbon-14 measurements in the vicinity of nuclear power plants, it said.

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Carbon-14 dating is a method for determining the age of an object containing organic material by using the properties of radiocarbon, a radioactive isotope of carbon. The method was developed in the late 1940s at the University of Chicago by Willard Libby, who received the Nobel Prize in Chemistry this work in 1960.

Measuring the amount of Carbon-14 in a sample from a dead plant or animal, such as a piece of wood or a fragment of bone, provides information that can be used to calculate when the animal or plant died, it said.

CARER is an advanced centre for radioecological and radiation protection research in the country with collaborations with many advanced laboratories of the world. The centre is serving the research needs of various research groups from national laboratories / institutions / universities of the country, the release added.

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