Kiran Chug writes in the Dominion Post about GNS’s new $3.4 million accelerator mass spectrometer, which will be used to carbon-date specimens of fossils, rock, or anything else.
The mass spectrometer’s results would be used to better understand climate change and could also assist with improved earthquake prediction, as well as, more commercially, dating artefacts.
An excerpt: (read in full here)
“GNS Science National Isotope Centre general manager Frank Bruhn said the equipment would help researchers understand climate change because it could be used to trace the movement of carbon through the environment.
“It could also be used to help with earthquake prediction, by age-dating prehistoric ruptures on major faults such as the Wellington fault.
“Similarly, prehistoric tsunami deposits could be dated to within 35 years, so the size and frequency of such natural disasters could be better understood.”