Rhenium-Osmium dating is a form of radiometric dating based on the beta decay of the isotope 187Re to 187Os. This normally occurs with a half-life of 41.6 × 109 y,[1] but studies using fully ionised 187Re atoms have found that this can decrease to only 33 y.[2] Both rhenium and osmium are strongly siderophilic (iron loving) and chalcophilic (sulfur loving) making them useful in dating sulfide ores such as gold and Cu-Ni deposits.
This dating method is based on an isochron calculated based on isotopic ratios measured using N-TIMS (Negative – Thermal Ionization Mass Spectrometry).
Rhenium-Osmium dating is carried out by the isochron dating method. Isochrons are created by analysing several samples believed to have formed at the same time from a common source. The Re-Os isochron plots the ratio of radiogenic 187Os to non-radiogenic 188Os against the ratio of the parent isotope 187Re to the non-radiogenic isotope 188Os. The stable and relatively abundant osmium isotope 188Os is used to normalize the radiogenic isotope in the isochron.
The Re-Os isochron is defined by the following equation:
where:
A good example of an application of the Re-Os isochron method is a study on the dating of a gold deposit in the Witwatersrand mining camp, South Africa.[3]