The age of the universe from nuclear chronometers.
An overview is presented of the current situation regarding radioactive dating of the matter of which our Galaxy is comprised. A firm lower bound on the age from nuclear chronometers of approximately 9-10 Gyr is entirely consistent with age determinations from globular clusters and white dwarf cooling histories. The reasonable assumption of an approximately uniform nucleosynthesis rate yields an age for the Galaxy of 12.8 +/- 3 Gyr, which again is consistent with current determinations from other methods.
Truran
J W
JW
Department of Astronomy and Astrophysics, Enrico Fermi Institute, University of Chicago, 5640 S. Ellis Avenue, Chicago, IL 60637, USA.