Scientists claim the Earth is almost 5 billion years old, how do they know?

Answer 1

Science only has an approximation of the age of the Earth. Religion is trying to make science wrong on any count to make a case for creationism. This is a bad way to prove your own truth or belief system. Religious belief are somewhat static. Science will continue to grow to the point religions will become obsolete.

Answer 2

When scientists attempt to learn the age of the universe, they usually don't look at evidence on Earth itself, because the Earth's crust is typically eating up and destroying the evidence (although the age of the oldest rocks set a lower limit on the Earth's age.)

What they look at is the age of unchanged objects from the origin of the solar system, such as meteorites, etc - that would not be altered by atmosphere or plate tectonics. What they look at is lead isotopes in order to figure out the half-life of any radioactive elements that were once present in the meteorite. Using the different lead isotopes, they can cross-relate the decay to a fairly accurate figure of about 4.55 billion years old for the general age of objects in our solar system.

The Earth cannot be younger than 3.9 billion years. There are rocks that old with trace signs of life in them.

Answer 3

Scientists can research the death of a star to trace back how far it has existed. They say the earth MAY be MORE than almost 5 billion years BUT we don't have the proof dating past that so we don't really know for sure.

Answer 4

There are several different forms of evidence that all point to an age around 5 billion (4.7 billion). Carbon dating is one kind of natural clock, but carbon dating is only good for relatively dating relatively recent things, on the order of 100,000 years or less. But there are other clocks based on other kinds of radioactive decay that can time much longer scales. In fact, scientists recently used a very long scale radioactive decay clock to show that one star in our galaxy is 13 billion years old!

Note that there are other kinds of evidence besides radioactive decay. For example, the movement of tetonic plates can be use to date low long it has been since south america separated from africa, or indeed since all continents separated from the original continent Pangaea, though Pangaea dates back to only about 1.1 billion years ago. Continental drift is completely independent from radioactive decay measurements, yet confirms that the earth is far older than creationists claim.

Answer 5

Measuring the radioactive decay rates of uranium.

You would probably enjoy Bill Bryson's book 'A Short History of Everything' where he goes over what we know and HOW we know it.

Carbon dating is only good up to millions of years, at the most, because it has a much shorter half-life than uranium - it decays much faster, so there's so little of it left after millions of years that you can't get as good an answer as you can after a few thousand. Which is why we have MANY radioactive isotopes we use for dating, not just carbon and uranium.

Answer 6

First, there's no longer something interior the Bible regarding the Earth being 5000 years previous. That length of time grew to become into reported with the aid of Bishop Usher. What he did grew to become into upload up the a while of persons given interior the family individuals tree interior the Bible and arrive at 5000 years. it relatively is a thoroughly improper way of calculating Bible historic previous for the particularly ordinary reason that Jewish Historians have been in basic terms like various historians back then, if some one grew to become right into a jerk, they left him out of the records and by no ability even reported him. How previous 'is' the worldwide? nicely we in basic terms don't recognize via fact we don't recognize precisely how God went approximately becoming the present cosmos we see around us. Even without Bible historic previous, the classic previous is a secret. some historic astronomers do no longer point out Venus. once you bear in mind how superb that planet is, it relatively is a secret why they by no ability refer-ed to it. The parent you supply of 5 Billion years is likewise organic delusion, it relatively is as plenty hypothesis as Usher's dates. All all of us recognize is around 15000 years in the past, the Human race went with the aid of an intensive and dazzling substitute. present day guy grew to become into created. Christians believe God created guy, so do Jews. persons speculate traveling aliens created a hybrid from present people to apply as low-priced labour for their farming and mining operations, all religions on the instant are in basic terms 'shipment Cults' clung onto with the aid of people who long for a secure, yet slave ridden previous they upload. Evolution is a discredited concept.

Answer 7

They have methods of dating. If you don't know the Universal Theology of the New Jerusalem, that the first books of the Bible are actually a parable up to Abraham, you may get sucked into useless debate about the age of the earth.

Answer 8

by the age of the rocks the deeper you go the more you find out but since we cant really go that deep you have to look at craters
when a asteroid hits any ground it goes in deep but at the same time old rocks come up its a very interesting process we just study the rocks that come out that gives us a small estimate on how old the world is but it is not a definite answer

Answer 9

What terrifies me is that many of you obviously got past third grade science class without knowing something so basic.

You and your descendants are certain to end up mowing the lawns of the Chinese and Indians.

This is the quality of education we get in a country that pays teachers $30K and pays basketball players millions.

Answer 10

Ratio of radioactivity to decay products in meteors suggests the age of the solar system, and assumption that the Earth formed when the rest of the solar system did.