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How the geologists used physics to show the physicists that they were wrong.

T.C. Chamberlain ponders the age of the Earth.

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Biblical

Cooling of the Earth (Thermodynamic)

Orbital dynamics (George Darwin)

Ocean chemistry

Erosion and sedimentation

Theophilus – 7,519

Eusebius – 7,167

St. Basil – 5,994

St Augustine – 6,321

Alphonso X – 8,952

Lightfoot - 5918

Ussher‟s 1650 estimate of 4004BCE

Telliamed, 1748

“Let us not measure the past duration of the world by that of our own years.”

Used decline in sea level to obtain an age of two billion years.

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Proposed that the age of the Earth could be estimated from the salt content of the ocean (1715).

The experiment “is chiefly intended to refute the ancient notion, some have of late entertained, of the eternity of all things; though perhaps by it the world may be found much older than many have hitherto imagined.”

“The quantity of sodium now in the sea, and the annual rate of its supply by the rivers, lead, it will be seen, to the deduction that the age of the Earth is 99 million years.” (1899)

By 1909 he had revised his estimate to 150 million years.

Na 68,000,000Mg 45,000,000Li 20,000,000Sr 19,000,000Sediments 14,000,000K 11,000,000Ag 2,100,000Au 560,000Mo 500,000Sb 350,000Rb 270,000Zn 180,000Sn 100,000Ba 84,000

Cu 50,000Bi 45,000Hg 42,000Co 18,000Ni 9,000Si 8,000Pb 2,000Mn 1,400W 1,000Cr 350Th 350Ti 160Fe 140Al 100

1. Assumption of constant rate of influx across geologic time known to be wrong.

2. Poorly estimated parameters: rates of erosion and solution, rainfall, runoff, continental area, average exposed rock composition over time.

3. Ignores movement of elements out of oceans, movement which occurs at approximately the same rate as influx. Therefore confuses residence time with accumulation time

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1. Formation of molten Earth

2. Cooling to hand-hot temperature

3. Enveloped with global sea

4. Volcanic activity

5. Emergence of land animals

6. Tectonic activity forms the land masses

7. Appearance of humans

First application of experiment to problems of geology

Cooling of metal spheres of various diameters

Estimated 96,670 years for Earth to cool to current temperature.

Privately believed 3 billion years.

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Professor of Natural Philosophy @ Glasgow (1846 - 1899)

Kelvin scale (1848)

Second Law of Thermodynamics (1851)

First transatlantic cable (1866)

Peerage (1882)

President, Royal Society (1890 – „95 )

All energy transformations result in loss of energy as heat (1852)

“Within a finite period of time the Earth must have been, and within a finite period of time to come the Earth must again be, unfit for the habitation of man as at present constituted, unless operations have been, or are to be performed, which are impossible under the laws to which the known operations going on at present in the material world are subject.”

“It seems, therefore, on the whole most probable that the sun has not illuminated the earth for 100,000,000years, and almost certain that he has not done so for 500,000,000 years. As for the future, we may say, with equal certainty, that inhabitants of the earth cannot continue to enjoy the light and heat essential to their life, for many million years longer, unless sources now unknown to us are prepared in the great storehouse of creation.”

“For eighteen years it has pressed on my mind, that essential principles of Thermo-dynamics have been overlooked by those geologists who uncompromisingly oppose all paroxysmal hypotheses, and maintain not only that we have examples now before us, on the earth, of all the different actions by which its crust has been modified in geological history, but that these actions have never, or have not on the whole, been more violent in past time than they are at present.”

“On the Secular Cooling of the Earth”

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“It is quite certain the solar system cannot have gone on even as at present, for a few hundred thousand or a few million years, without the irrevocable loss (by dissipation …) of a very considerable proportion of the entire energy initially in store for sun heat

Assumption: The earth is a warm, chemically inert planetthat is cooling.

Assumption: It can be modeledas an infinite plane of infinite thickness.

Assumption: Heat loss is through conduction from the center.

“I think we may with much probability say that the consolidation cannot have taken place less than 20,000,000 years ago, or we should have more underground heat than we actually have, nor more than 400,000,000 years ago, or we should not have so much as the least observed underground increment of temperature. That is to say, I conclude that Leibnitz‟s epoch of emergence of the consistentior status [the initial date of all geological history] was probably between those dates.”

But … 98 million years is most likely.

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Applies Kelvin‟s methodology and got an answer of 2.298 billion years.

First director of the USGS (1879 – ‟81).

“Age of the Earth” American Journal of Science (1893)

24 million years

Kelvin‟s curve

King‟s curve

Parameters:

T: Initial temperatureg: Thermogradientt: Cooling time

“During the thirty-five years which have passed since I gave this wide-ranging estimate [20,000,000 – 400,000,000 years] experimental investigation has supplied much of the knowledge then wanting regarding the thermal properties of rocks to form a closer estimate of the time which has passed since the consolidation of the earth, and we have now good reason for judging that it was more than 20 and less than 40 million years ago, and probably much nearer 20 than 40 … I am not led to differ much from [King‟s] estimate of 24,000,000years.”

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Physicists seemed to be limiting the age of the Earth to circa 25 million years.

For biologists, this wasn‟t a problem as they generally didn‟t subscribe to an evolutionary process that required long periods of time and instead allowed for directed evolution.

This was, however, a problem for the geologists who felt that long periods of time were needed for formation of the Earth as we see it today.

“The argument is simple enough.

Assuming the earth to be nothing but a

cooling mass, the quantity of heat lost per

year, supposing the rate of cooling to

have been uniform, multiplied by any

given number of years, will be given the

minimum temperature that number of

years ago. But is the earth nothing but a

cooling mass… and has its cooling been

uniform? … I do not think it can be denied

that such conditions may exist, and may

so greatly affect the supply, and the loss,

of terrestrial heat as to destroy the value

of any calculations which leave them out

of sight. ”

“The fascinating impressiveness of rigorous mathematical analyses, within its atmosphere of precision and elegance, should not blind us to the defects of the premises that condition the whole process. There is perhaps no beguilement more insidious and dangerous than an elaborate and elegant mathematical process built upon unfortified premises.”

“Is present knowledge relative to the behavior of matter under such extraordinary conditions as obtain in the interior of the sun sufficiently exhaustive to warrant the assertion that no unrecognized source if heat reside there? What the internal constitution of the atoms may be is yet an open question. It is not improbable that they are complex organizations and the seats of enormous energies.”

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The energy from radioactive decay “must be taken into account in cosmical physics. The maintenance of solar energy, for example, no longer presents any fundamental difficulty if the internal energy of the component elements are considered to be available, i.e., if processes of sub-atomic change are going on.”

“I saw [Kelvin] sit up, open an eye and cock a baleful glance at me! Then a sudden inspiration came to me, and I said Lord Kelvin had limited the age of the Earth, provided no new source of heat was discovered. That prophetic utterance refers to what we are considering tonight. Radium! Behold!”

Decay in the crust & core produces significant heat.

1. Parameters are poorly known (conductivity of rocks; thermal gradient; initial temperature of the Earth; heat released upon crystallization; exact composition and structure of the Earth).

2. Considers conduction but not convection, when the latter is a more important source of heat loss.

3. Ignores other sources of heat:

a. Heat left over from the formation of the Earth, e.g. gravitational energy from compaction, mechanical energy from meteor impacts, chemical energy from the formation of the Fe-Ni core.

b. Radioactivity

c. Energy from contraction due to cooling

d. Energy from ongoing core expansion

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Parent

Daughter

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“The helium observed in the radioactive minerals is almost certainly due to its production from the radium and other radioactive substances contained therein. If the rate of production of helium from known weights of the different radioelements were experimentally known, it should thus be possible to determine the interval required for the production of the amount of helium observed in radioactive minerals, or, in other words, to determine the age of the mineral.”

“The association of lead with uranium in rock-minerals and its application to the measurement of geological time.” Transactions of the Royal Society (1911)

“One of the greatest pieces of geological literature ever published.” (Peter Wyse Jackson, 2007)

Used U-Pb methods to date rocks from Ceylon to 1,640,000,000 years – the old rocks then known.

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Lead content in an ore

=

Lead from decay

+

“Primeval lead”

Taking Nair‟s insight, Holmes develops

which allowed development of

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Sr87 + Sr86 Rb87 + Sr86

WHOLE ROCKS

SINGLE ROCK,

MULTIPLE MINERALS

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Daughter leakage would yield younger ages than the correct one.

Parent leakage – which would give older ages – does not occur in the types of rock used

Known (and detectable) effects of weathering and thermal stress. Radioisotopes and the Age of The

Earth

Institute for Creation ResearchCreation Research Society

Answers in Genesis56

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The radioactive decay rates of nuclides used in radiometric dating have not been observed to vary since their rates were directly measurable, at least within limits of accuracy. This is despite experiments that attempt to change decay rates.

The half-lives of radioisotopes can be predicted from first principles through quantum mechanics. Any variation would have to come from changes to fundamental constants.

“Producing a billion years of radioactive decay in a „Creation week‟ or year-long flood would have produced a billion years worth of heat from radioactive decay as well. This would pretty much vaporize the earth. Since the earth apparently has not been vaporized recently, we can be confident that the accelerated decay did not occur.”

http://www.talkorigins.org/indexcc/CD/CD015.html

Decay rates are experimentally observed◦ and are constant for the isotopes used

Not all rocks can be dated◦ but those that can be provide “brackets”

We can check for enrichment, leakage and thermal stress◦ via isochron methods

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Greenland / Canada

3.85 billion

Gneisses

(metamorphic)

Oldest rocks 3.85 billion years

Oldest mineral Zirconium silicate ZrSiO4

Contains Thorium & Uranium and thus can estimate age of crystallization

4.40 billion years

By 1947, the geologists had come to a lower limit for the age of the Earth of 3.35 billion years.

The cosmologists (e.g. Edwin Hubble) however thought the universe was 1.80 billion years old.

We have a problem. Who is right?

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“Age of Meteorites and the Earth”

Geochima et Cosmochima Acta

1956

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