Hundreds of years of research have not allowed us to know the exact age of our planet, but fortunately, scientists still managed to find out the exact age of our planet.
We know with certainty that Earth today is about 4.5 billion years old, whereas its core is about two years younger than this age, due to the time-prolonging effects of gravity, writes IFLScience.
However, how and when did scientists manage to find this information? Unfortunately, the first attempts to calculate the age of the Earth using science were unsuccessful. In 1844, physicist William Thomson came up with a way to measure the age of our planet – originally postulating that our Earth is a molten drop in space. He then calculated the time it would take for the planet to cool to its current state. Then it seemed to him that he was going to let him calculate the age of the world.
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Years passed, he made calculations and came to the conclusion that our planet is about 20-400 million years old. The problem, however, was that Darwin contradicted a number of fundamental things, such as geology, with his ideas about how long it would take for animals to evolve. Another inconsistent fact was that Thomson believed the Sun was only 20 million years old.
Thomson’s estimates were unsuccessful, but radiometric dating followed, providing a much more accurate way to determine the age of rocks. According to the U.S. Geological Survey, the age of terrestrial and lunar rocks and meteorites is measured by the decay of long-lived radioactive isotopes — elements naturally found in rocks and minerals that decay from 700 million to over 100 billion years. stable isotopes of other elements.
The researchers note that these dating methods are based on physics and are collectively known as radiometric dating. Today it is widely used to measure when the rock to be dated was last melted or sufficiently disturbed.
As a result, the use of radiometric data provides a much more accurate understanding of the age of rocks. At the same time, dating terrestrial rocks can only give the minimum possible age of the Earth. The oldest rock that scientists have ever discovered dates back to about 4.04 billion years ago and was discovered in northwestern Canada.
In this way, scientists were able to calculate the minimum age of the planet, because Earth cannot be younger than its oldest rock. However, if we cannot analyze every stone on our planet, it is impossible to estimate the maximum possible age of the Earth using this method alone.
Instead, the scientists looked at rocks from the Moon and other bodies in the solar system, where this type of rock recycling is okay. In 1953, geochemist Claire Cameron Patterson studied meteorite samples from rocks that fell on Arizona. She found that the samples contained large amounts of lead isotopes used for radioactive dating. These specimens have been dated to between 4.53 and 4.58 billion years ago. At the same time, the 50-million-year span is correlated with the time the solar system evolved, as scientists suggest.
Moreover, scientists continued to study space rocks, which only strengthened our understanding of how our solar system evolved, and this allowed us to refine previous estimates of Earth’s age.
Previously Focus He wrote about how old our world is: scientists argue that the answer is not as clear as it seems.
Source: Focus
Ashley Fitzgerald is an accomplished journalist in the field of technology. She currently works as a writer at 24 news breaker. With a deep understanding of the latest technology developments, Ashley’s writing provides readers with insightful analysis and unique perspectives on the industry.