Archbishop of the Irish Catholic Church, James Uxue,
Now, Wuxue's operation has no basis at all. It is to trace the timeline from ancient book myths and find data to calculate the date of birth of the earth, just like calculating the age of Jade Emperor from Journey to the West.
The second attempt to calculate the age of the earth was the 18th century French naturalist Benoit de Majeser. He is the first person to use the physical properties of the Earth to estimate the age of the Earth. His method is very simple. He found that fossils of shells were found in Himalayas or Sahara Desert , so he believed that the earth was completely covered by sea water in ancient times. Nowadays, terrestrial creatures have evolved from the ocean.
Benua de Maye
Then it is very simple to calculate the age of the earth. As long as you know the current speed of sea level descent and combine the current height of sea level, you can estimate the age of the earth. Demayer calculated that the age of the earth was 2 billion years, which was beyond everyone's expectations at the time.
Demayer's method is logically correct, but there are shell fossils everywhere on the earth not because of the drop in sea level. In fact, the sea level of the earth has basically not changed, but is caused by the plate movement of the earth's continent.
Next one who contributes to the study of the Earth's age is the son of Darwin , George Darwin . George likes to study the moon very much. He believes that the moon was part of the earth in ancient times. Because the inside of the earth became hotter and hotter, coupled with the high-speed rotation, some of the matter was thrown out, forming the moon. Based on his imagination, he calculated that it would take at least 56 million years for the Earth and the Moon to form today's pattern, so he believed that the Earth's age should be about the same age.
George Darwin
George's second year after George published his ideas, German geologist John Joley publicly proposed different estimation methods. At that time, many geologists believed that the salt of the Earth's seawater was obtained by washing the rocks, so the age of the Earth could be estimated by the rate of increase in seawater salt. According to Joley's calculations, the age of the earth should be around 89 million years.
John Joley
Although there is no problem with the calculation logic, scientists have not figured out whether the salt in the sea water is obtained by the river erosion or whether it is originally brought by the sea water. The assumption premise of Joley's calculation is still wrong.
19th century, scientists slowly discovered that based on the fossils in the strata and the deposition speed of the strata itself, the age of the earth may be so unimaginable to humans. The deposition and corrosion rate of these formations is very slow and will definitely not be formed in a short period of time.
Darwin himself, based on his research on biological evolution , believes that the evolution of organisms must be a long process. It is estimated that Darwin will take at least 300 million years to evolve from ancient organisms in fossils to the current stage.
Time comes to the end of the 19th century. In 1896, William Rongen discovered X-rays, which could penetrate paper directly, causing a sensation in physics. In the same year, French physicist, Nobel Prize winner, Henry Becquerel, discovered the radioactivity of uranium. He believed that the radioactivity of uranium comes from uranium itself and does not require any excitation of external energy. Later, Madam Curie and his husband discovered radioactive plutonium and radium. The discovery of
radioactive material provides a new direction for estimating the age of the earth, and also allows nuclear energy, a double-edged sword, to go to the stage of history.
1901, New Zealand physicist Ernest Rutherford discovered that radioactive element will pass through active elements and become stable elements. And this change has certain rules. Within a fixed time, half of the radioactive elements will become stable elements, and this time is the half-life of the radioactive elements .
Rutherford immediately realized that the half-life of radioactive elements was the natural clock. He calculated that the age of the earth was about 500 million years through samples of uranium rocks.However, the result of the decay of uranium is helium . The helium element that becomes gas will not remain in the rock, which brings a lot of uncertainty to the determination. But Rutherford's method of using half-life to determine the age of the formation is not wrong.
However, if you want to determine the most accurate age of the earth, you need to find the oldest stone on the earth and measure the content of radioisotope in this stone to infer the age of the earth. How to find the oldest stone on the earth has become a problem that geologists need to solve.
The rocks on the earth have undergone years of geological effects, and are also accompanied by human pollution. It is almost impossible to find the oldest stone. But astronomers generally believe that the celestial bodies in the solar system were formed at about the same time. As long as you find the meteorite from the solar system and measure the age of the meteorite, you can calculate the age of the earth. The last person who appeared in
is American geologist Claire Cameron Patterson. He has been engaged in the research of isotope throughout his life and is known as the greatest geologist of the 20th century. He obtained a piece of meteorite that fell on the earth 60,000 years ago from his mentor. Through this piece of meteorite, he determined that the age of the earth was 4.1 billion to 4.6 billion years ago, and corrected his data in 1953, and obtained that the age of the earth was 4.55 billion years or more, which became the recognized age of the earth.
Claire Cameron Patterson
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