Impact and applications: atom trap, krypton-81, and Saharan water

Much can be learned from the analysis of the ubiquitous long-lived radioactive isotopes. In the late 1940s, Willard Libby and coworkers first detected the cosmogenic 14C(t1/2 = 5.7 x 103 yr, isotopic abundance 14C/C = 1 x 10-12) in nature and demonstrated that such analysis could be used for archaeological dating. Since then, two by now well-established methods, Low-Level Counting (LLC) and Accelerator Mass Spectrometry (AMS), have been used to analyze 14C and many other radioisotopes and to extract valuable information encoded in the production, transport, and decay processes of these isotopes.