Objectives of CRONUS

The objective of the CRONUS-Earth Project is to simultaneously address the various uncertainties affecting the production and accumulation of in-situ cosmogenic nuclides, with the goal of producing a widely accepted and internally consistent set of parameters that can be used in calculating ages and erosion rates.  With properly designed experiments it should be feasible to reduce the overall uncertainty in results to approximately ±5%, regardless of location, and to produce consistent results with differing nuclides.

A subsequent objective of the Cronus-Earth project is to provide a means of improving communication among international cosmogenic nuclide researchers who are working on similar projects.  The end goal is to efficiently improve cosmogenic nuclide methods by orchestrating concurrent research and funding attempts.

A third objective is to enable rapid communication of ideas across a wide range of disciplines.  These include cosmic ray physicists, geochronologists, mass spectrometrists, isotope geochemists, geomorphologists, particle physicists, and geomagneticians.  It would be rare to have more than half of these fields meet at any single conference.

This web page is meant to help facilitate this communication.  The participants will benefit from your comments, concerns, or suggestions regarding the role and objectives of the CRONUS-Earth project.

The overall goal of CRONUS-Earth is to put the systematics of terrestrial cosmogenic nuclide methods on a firm foundation.  It is not intended to fund development of new methodologies or site-specific investigations.