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Bezig met laden... The Chronologers' Quest: The Search for the Age of the Earth (editie 2006)door Patrick Wyse Jackson
Informatie over het werkThe Chronologers' Quest: The Search for the Age of the Earth door Patrick Wyse Jackson
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The debate over the age of the Earth has been ongoing for over two thousand years, and has pitted physicists and astronomers against biologists, religious philosophers against geologists. The Chronologers' Quest tells the fascinating story of our attempts to determine the age of the Earth. This book investigates the many novel methods used in the search for the Earth's age, from James Ussher and John Lightfoot examining biblical chronologies, Comte de Buffon and Lord Kelvin determining the length of time for the cooling of the Earth, to the more recent investigations of Arthur Holmes and Clair Patterson into radioactive dating of rocks and meteorites. The Chronologers' Quest is a readable account of the measurement of geological time. It will be of great interest to a wide range of readers, from those with little scientific background, to students and scientists in a wide range of the earth sciences. Geen bibliotheekbeschrijvingen gevonden. |
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Google Books — Bezig met laden... GenresDewey Decimale Classificatie (DDC)550Natural sciences and mathematics Earth sciences & geology GeologyLC-classificatieWaarderingGemiddelde:
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The onset of geology quickly showed that you just couldn’t fit all that rock into 6000 years, and Jackson covers the speculations of Lyell, Hutton and other early rock-hammerers. Serious estimation attempts included trying to establish sedimentary denudation rates and increasing ocean salinity measurements, which gave immense age ranges (from 20My to 1.5Gy); however, the question was definitively settled by Lord Kelvin, who calculated, based on the assumption that solar heat was due to gravitational contraction, that the Sun (and therefore the Earth) was about 60My old. Since Kelvin was the world’s foremost physicist, that settled the question once and for all, which turned out to be about two years (when the Curies discovered radium). Kelvin never did accept radioactivity, feeling that the radium had absorbed heat from elsewhere and was now giving it off again.
Jackson concludes by covering the early days of radiometric dating up to 1956, when Clair Patterson published 4.550Gy for the age of meteorites (and therefore the solar system, and therefore the Earth).
Entertaining, and probably quite useful for debates with YECs, who always seem to dredge up sedimentary denudation and salinity arguments. It would have been nice to include just a little more explanation of why these methods didn’t work. But you can’t have everything. ( )