According to radiometric dating how many years old is earth

Scientists have calculated that Earth is billion years old, with an error and revamps the crust, the first rocks have long since been recycled, In the early 20th century, scientists refined the process of radiometric dating.
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Scientists attempted to predict the age based on changing sea levels, the time it took for Earth or the sun to cool to present temperatures, and the salinity of the ocean. As science progressed, these methods were proven to be unreliable; for instance, the rise and fall of the ocean was shown to be an ever-changing process rather than a gradually declining one.


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In an effort to calculate the age of the planet, scientists turned to the rocks that cover its surface. However, because plate tectonics constantly changes and revamps the crust, the first rocks have long since been recycled, melted down and reformed into new outcrops. In the early 20th century, scientists refined the process of radiometric dating.

How old are your rocks?

Earlier research had shown that isotopes of some radioactive elements decay into other elements at rates that can be easily predicted. By examining the existing elements, scientists can calculate the initial quantity, and thus how long it took for the elements to decay, allowing them to determine the age of the rock. Rocks older than 3. Greenland boasts the Isua Supracrustal rocks 3.

Samples in Western Australia run 3. Research groups in Australia found the oldest mineral grains on Earth. These tiny zirconium silicate crystals have ages that reach 4. Their source rocks have not yet been found. The rocks and zircons set a lower limit on the age of Earth of 4. In an effort to further refine the age of Earth, scientists began to look outward. The material that formed the solar system was a cloud of dust and gas that surrounded the young sun. Alternatively, more than one dating system may be used on a sample to check the date. Some meteorites are furthermore considered to represent the primitive material from which the accreting solar disk was formed.

Nevertheless, ancient Archaean lead ores of galena have been used to date the formation of Earth as these represent the earliest formed lead-only minerals on the planet and record the earliest homogeneous lead-lead isotope systems on the planet. These have returned age dates of 4.

How Old is Earth?

Statistics for several meteorites that have undergone isochron dating are as follows: The Canyon Diablo meteorite was used because it is both large and representative of a particularly rare type of meteorite that contains sulfide minerals particularly troilite , FeS , metallic nickel - iron alloys, plus silicate minerals.

This is important because the presence of the three mineral phases allows investigation of isotopic dates using samples that provide a great separation in concentrations between parent and daughter nuclides. This is particularly true of uranium and lead. Lead is strongly chalcophilic and is found in the sulfide at a much greater concentration than in the silicate, versus uranium. Because of this segregation in the parent and daughter nuclides during the formation of the meteorite, this allowed a much more precise date of the formation of the solar disk and hence the planets than ever before.

The age determined from the Canyon Diablo meteorite has been confirmed by hundreds of other age determinations, from both terrestrial samples and other meteorites. This is interpreted as the duration of formation of the solar nebula and its collapse into the solar disk to form the Sun and the planets. This 50 million year time span allows for accretion of the planets from the original solar dust and meteorites. The moon, as another extraterrestrial body that has not undergone plate tectonics and that has no atmosphere, provides quite precise age dates from the samples returned from the Apollo missions.

Rocks returned from the Moon have been dated at a maximum of 4. Martian meteorites that have landed upon Earth have also been dated to around 4. Lunar samples, since they have not been disturbed by weathering, plate tectonics or material moved by organisms, can also provide dating by direct electron microscope examination of cosmic ray tracks. The accumulation of dislocations generated by high energy cosmic ray particle impacts provides another confirmation of the isotopic dates.

Cosmic ray dating is only useful on material that has not been melted, since melting erases the crystalline structure of the material, and wipes away the tracks left by the particles.

Altogether, the concordance of age dates of both the earliest terrestrial lead reservoirs and all other reservoirs within the Solar System found to date are used to support the fact that Earth and the rest of the Solar System formed at around 4. From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. Scientific dating of the age of the Earth. Human timeline and Nature timeline. Age of the Solar System. Archived from the original on 23 December Special Publications, Geological Society of London. Speculations about the age of the earth and primitive mantle characteristics".

Earth and Planetary Science Letters. Archived from the original on Meteorites and the Age of the Solar System". The Age of Everything.

Science Confirms a Young Earth—The Radioactive Dating Methods are Flawed

University of Chicago Press. The disintegration products of uranium". American Journal of Science. For the abstract, see: The Outcrop, Geology Alumni Newsletter. Archived PDF from the original on Australian Journal of Earth Sciences. Oxford University Press US. Archived from the original on 24 November Geological Society, London, Special Publications.

A missed opportunity in geodynamics".

How Old is the Earth: Scientific Age of the Earth

Lord Kelvin and the Age of the Earth. Journal of Geophysical Research. Meet your microbial mom". Archived from the original on June 29, Being the life and letters of the Rt.

A Response to “Scientific” Creationism

Geochimica et Cosmochimica Acta. Conference Proceedings, Origin of the Earth and Moon. Lunar and Planetary Institute. Archived PDF from the original on 16 December Proceedings, Eleventh Annual V.

Age of the Earth

Earth Day Global warming Human impact on the environment. Earth in culture Earth in science fiction Etymology of the word "Earth" History of the world International law Landscape painting List of countries World economy. Earth sciences portal Solar System portal.

Astronomy portal Earth sciences portal. Retrieved from " https: The third approach, and the one that scientists think gives the most accurate age for the Earth, the other planets, and the Solar System, is to determine model lead ages for the Earth, the Moon, and meteorites. This method is thought to represent the time when lead isotopes were last homogeneously distributed throughout the Solar System and, thus, the time that the planetary bodies were segregated into discrete chemical systems.

The results from these methods indicate that the Earth, meteorites, the Moon, and, by inference, the entire Solar System are 4. Before reviewing briefly the evidence for the age of the Earth, I emphasize that the formation of the Solar System and the Earth was not an instantaneous event but occurred over a finite period as a result of processes set in motion when the universe formed.

It is, therefore, more correct to talk about formational intervals rather than discrete ages for the Solar System and the Earth. Present evidence indicates, however, that these intervals were rather short million years in comparison with the length of time that has elapsed since the Solar System formed some 4 to 5 billion years ago. Thus, the ages of the Earth, the Moon, and meteorites as measured by different methods represent slightly different events, although the differences in these ages are generally slight, and so, for the purposes of this chapter they are here treated as a single event.

All the major continents contain a core of very old rocks fringed by younger rocks. The rocks in these shields are mostly metamorphic, meaning they have been changed from other rocks into their present form by great heat and pressure beneath the surface; most have been through more than one metamorphism and have had very complex histories. A metamorphic event may change the apparent radiometric age of a rock. Most commonly, the event causes partial or total loss of the radiogenic daughter isotope, resulting in a reduced age.

Thus, the radiometric ages obtained from these oldest rocks are not necessarily the age of the first event in the history of the rock. Moreover, many of the oldest dated rocks intrude still older but undatable rocks. In all cases, the measured ages provide only a minimum age for the Earth. So far, rocks older than 3.

The Greenland samples have been especially well studied. The Amitsoq Gneisses in western Greenland, for example, have been dated by five different methods Table 6 ; within the analytical uncertainties, the ages are the same and indicate that these rocks are about 3. These samples are from rocks that contain inclusions of still older but as yet undatable rocks.

Recently, Basu and others 16 reported a nine-sample Sm-Nd isochron age of 3. Studies of the oldest rocks from the Precambrian shields show that the Earth is older than 3. The geology of these oldest rocks also indicates that there was a substantial period of history of the Earth before 3.

Meet the neighbors

There are several possible reasons for the apparent absence of this earliest record. A second reason is that the Moon and, by inference, the Earth, were subjected to intense bombardment by large meteorites from the time of their initial formation to about 3. The correct reason for the absence of data may well be some combination of the above. There are two basic types of meteorites, stone and iron; other types are intermediate in composition between these two.

Stone meteorites are composed primarily of the silicate minerals olivine and pyroxene, whereas iron meteorites consist primarily of nickel-iron alloy. Stone meteorites commonly contain small amounts of nickel-iron, and many iron meteorites include small amounts of silicate minerals. Once thought to be the remains of a shattered planet, meteorites probably originated from some 20 to 70 different parent bodies the size of large asteroids.

Some meteorites are samples of the parent bodies that apparently were large enough to undergo partial melting and differentiation to produce different rock types. Others, primarily the stone meteorites called chondrites, seem to represent rocks essentially unchanged since condensation from the solar nebula.