Geoscience Reference
In-Depth Information
14
The Universal problem
and Duck Soup
IS THE EARTH TOO OLD?
As we have seen, by the 1930s the geologists finally were reasonably
happy, following much soul-searching and research, with the notion
that the Earth was approximately 3,000 million years old. With this
harmonious consensus, one might have imagined that the debate on
the age of Earth would then have died down, and the whole topic
would have been sent into retirement in some quiet backwater.
The geologists might have been pleased with themselves, but
the astronomers were not, because they had decided that the Universe
was 2,000 million years old. How could the Earth be 1,000 million
years older than the Universe? This would certainly be impossible,
and so the findings of the geologists must have been at fault: after all
the astronomers had a long history of observations with which to
reinforce their contentions.
Stephen Brush of the University of Maryland has dissected this
topic in some detail, and notes that the scientists tackled the problems
of the age of the Earth and Universe from four perspectives. They
brought to bear atomic physics and the study of radioactivity as
already noted; stellar astronomy in which research was being rapidly
advanced through the development of larger and more powerful tele-
scopes with which to scan the night sky; theoretical physics and
cosmology, which is the science of the Universe as a whole; and
planetary geology, the study of the planets of our Solar System.
By the 1920s astronomy was gripped by a new theory that the
Universe was expanding in size. It was recognised that distant galaxies
were rapidly moving faster than those closer to us, and this was
demonstrated in the distant galaxies where the degree of redshift was
greater. A redshift is where the light emitted from the galaxies is
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