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In its early days, radiometric dating was a long and laborious
task. In later years the process sped up, but only recently has
dating a rock become relatively commonplace. In the early 1980s,
a group of researchers at the Australian National University in
Canberra built an instrument, called an ion microprobe, to date
rocks. This microprobe, known to scientists as SHRIMP (Sensitive
High Resolution Ion Microprobe), was designed specifically to
detect the decay of uranium in the earliest terrestrial
materials.
[Source: Oak Crest Institute of Science]
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