Probes
SHRIMP
In its early days, radiometric dating was a long and laborious task. In later years the process sped up, but only recently has dating a rock become relatively commonplace. In the early 1980s, a group of researchers at the Australian National University in Canberra built an instrument, called an ion microprobe, to date rocks. This microprobe, known to scientists as SHRIMP (Sensitive High Resolution Ion Microprobe), was designed specifically to detect the decay of uranium in the earliest terrestrial materials. [Source: Oak Crest Institute of Science]