stackyFACTSClair Patterson just wanted to figure out the exact age of the damn planet, but his uranium-lead dating samples kept getting contaminated.
Clair Patterson just wanted to figure out the exact age of the damn planet, but his uranium-lead dating samples kept getting contaminated. The problem wasn't his technique; it was that oil companies had pumped so much leaded gasoline into the atmosphere that the entire world was coated in a toxic sheen. He literally had to invent the modern ultra-clean laboratory just to do his math, accidentally becoming the guy who saved us all from lead poisoning.
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