Fission Track Dating

Fission track dating is a well-established method in geology for determining the age of rocks, being successfully in use for over four decades. This radiographic dating technique relies on the analysis of damage – or fission tracks which are induced by energetic and heavy daughter nuclides originating from a spontaneous Uranium-238 fission. By determining the density of fission tracks the age of the mineral can be estimated. Due to temperature and time depending healing (or annealing) of fission tracks the whole thermal history of the mineral is stored in its track-length distribution and therefore by measuring it, the so-called time-temperature path (t-T path) can be modeled. This t-T path includes much more information than a single age statement and can be used by special software to model the dynamics of earth’s upper crust over the last millions of years.