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Methods of age determination belong to the fundamental toolkit of modern Earth and environmental sciences, as well as archeology. Radiometric dating, based on the well-known radioactive decay of certain isotopes, is the gold standard among the dating methods, with radiocarbon (14C) as the most famous example. However, many more radioisotopes are necessary to cover the wide range of dating applications. Among them, 81Kr, or radiokrypton, has long been recognized as a desirable tool, especially for the dating of old groundwaters and ancient polar ice, but this goal has remained elusive. In PNAS, Buizert et al. (1) present, to my knowledge, the first successful 81Kr dating of polar ice. This breakthrough, along with two recent applications of 81Kr in groundwater (2) and thermal fluids (3), signals to me that the dream of radiokrypton dating has finally become reality.
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Werner Aeschbach (2014) studied this question.
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