Age of Earth Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 750 words

Age of Earth - Essay Example One of these planets, the Earth, used to be a scorching molten rock that cooled into dry land for 70,000 years – the period indicating how old the Earth was at the time Buffon made the study. On the other hand, Irish Archbishop James Ussher of the 17th century believed that the dates in the Bible are significantly reliable in determining how long the Earth has existed since creation. According to him, secular dates are able to project a trustworthy chronological structure of history where through the Bible, with specific reference to the death of King Nebuchadnezzar, he managed to estimate that the Earth was created on the 23rd of October, 4004 BC. For William Thomson, a British scientist widely known as Lord Kelvin, laws of thermodynamics govern the determination of the birth of the living planet. In particular, he necessitated the application of Fourier’s theory to calculate a date when the Earth, initially in its molten state (7000 Â °F), underwent cooling via conduction and radiation. Upon solving the Fourier’s equation, Thomson discovered the possibility that it could have taken the Earth about 24-40 million years to form as the extreme level of temperature evened out in the process. By the time John Joly proposed the revolutionary sodium method of approximating the Earth’s life during the late 19th century, he conducted a mathematical analysis of the rate at which salt is delivered to the ocean waters. This involved finding the concentrations of salt (by mass) in all oceans from which Joly conveyed the notion that the sum of these concentrations (in grams) divided by the average rate of salt flow (in grams / year) into the ocean equals the total age of the oceans combined which then serves as the basis for the age of the Earth. The technique with sodium enabled Joly to conclude that the Earth is approximately 90 – 100 million years old. A more modern approach in the field of chemistry was employed by the