Related papers: Nucleosynthesis Clocks and the Age of the Galaxy
The productions of thorium and uranium are key ingredients in $r$-process nucleo-cosmochronology. With the combination of improved nuclear and stellar data, we have made detailed investigations on the $r$-process abundance pattern in the…
Observations of metal-poor Galactic halo stars indicate that the abundance pattern of the (heaviest) neutron-capture elements is consistent with the scaled solar system r-process abundances. Utilizing the radioactive (r-process) element…
Abundance observations indicate the presence of often surprisingly large amounts of neutron capture (i.e., s- and r-process) elements in old Galactic halo and globular cluster stars. These observations provide insight into the nature of the…
Nuclear chronometer, which predicts the ages of the oldest stars by comparing the present and initial abundances of long-lived radioactive nuclides, provides an independent dating technique for the cosmos. A new nuclear chronometer called…
The ages of the oldest stars in the Galaxy indicate when star formation began, and provide a minimum age for the Universe. Radioactive dating of meteoritic material and stars relies on comparing the present abundance ratios of radioactive…
In a short review of neutron-capture elemental abundances in Galactic halo stars, emphasis is placed on the use of these elements to estimate the age of the Galactic halo. Two prominent characteristics of neutron-capture elements in halo…
Recent observations of r-nuclei, and in particular of Th, in ultra-metal poor stars revived the old idea that the Th cosmochronometry could provide an age estimate of the oldest stars in the Galaxy, and therefore a lower limit to the age of…
Abundance observations indicate the presence of rapid-neutron capture (i.e., r-process) elements in old Galactic halo and globular cluster stars. These observations provide insight into the nature of the earliest generations of stars in the…
The abundance patterns of metal-poor stars provide us a wealth of chemical information about various stages of the chemical evolution of the Galaxy. In particular, these stars allow us to study the formation and evolution of the elements…
We review recent observational and theoretical results concerning the presence of actinide nuclei on the surfaces of old halo stars and their use as an age determinant. We present model calculations which show that the observed universality…
In practically all known till now methods of nuclear chronometry there were usually taken into account the life-times of only fundamental states of $\alpha$-radioactive nuclei. But in the processes of nuclear synthesis in stars and under…
We present a review of the present state of knowledge regarding the relative ages of Galactic globular clusters. First, we discuss the relevant galaxy formation models and describe the detailed predictions they make with respect to the…
During the last several decades, there have been a number of advances in understanding the rapid neutron-capture process (i.e., the r-process). These advances include large quantities of high-resolution spectroscopic abundance data of…
The cosmic age is an important physical quantity in cosmology. Based on the radiometric method, a reliable lower limit of the cosmic age is derived to be $15.68\pm 1.95$ Gyr by using the $r$-process abundances inferred for the solar system…
Abundance observations indicate the presence of rapid-neutron capture (i.e., r-process) elements in old Galactic halo and globular cluster stars. These observations demonstrate that the earliest generations of stars in the Galaxy,…
The discovery of the second highly $r$-process-enhanced, extremely metal-poor star, CS 31082-001 ([Fe/H] $= -2.9$) has provided a powerful new tool for age determination, by virtue of the detection and measurement of the radioactive species…
In addition to long-lived radioactive nuclei like U and Th isotopes, which have been used to measure the age of the Galaxy, also radioactive nuclei with half-lives between 0.1 and 100 million years (short-lived radionuclides, SLRs) were…
The first determination of the age of the Galactic thin disk from Th/Eu nucleocosmochronology was accomplished by us in Papers I and II. The present work aimed at reducing the age uncertainty by expanding the stellar sample with the…
In this paper we analyse different chronometers based on the models of chemical evolution developed in Chamcham, Pitts \& Tayler (1993; hereafter CPT) and Chamcham \& Tayler (1994; hereafter CT). In those papers we discussed the ability of…
The main sequence turnoff luminosity is the best stellar `clock' which can be used to determine the absolute ages of globular clusters. This is due to the fact that it is generally assumed that the luminosity and lifetimes of main sequence…