Geoscience Reference
In-Depth Information
actual age of the Earth. Patterson was so excited by this that when he
arrived at his parents' house shortly afterwards for a flying visit, he had
to get his mother to admit him to a local hospital as he thought he was
having a heart attack.
In late September 1953 Patterson addressed an audience attending
the Conference on Nuclear Processes in Geologic Settings that had
convened at Williams Bay, Wisconsin, and announced his results: the
two ages he had derived from the Canyon Diablo meteorite were 4,510
and 4,570 million years. He presented the results again at the annual
meeting of the Geological Society of America held that year on 9 to 11
November inToronto, and attended by several thousand geologists who
were left in no doubt that the Earth was greater than 4 billion years old.
A scientific reporter picked up on this, and on 2 February 1954 the New
York Times carried an article under the banner 'Atom study gives Earth
age of 4.5 billion years'. Now both the scientific and general public
knew about this remarkable piece of geochronological detective work.
However, the age of the Earth was based on samples taken from
one meteorite only. Would others reveal concordant ages? Following
a suggestion by his colleague Leon Silver, Patterson assembled a suite
of different meteorites (Table
14.1
). Two of them, the Forest City
Table 14.1 Meteorites analysed by Clair Patterson whose ages were
reported in his 1953
a
and 1956 papers.
Canyon Diablo meteorite, Barringer Crater, Coconino County, Arizona.
Found 1891. Iron.
a
Henbury meteorite, Northern Territories, Australia. Fell 1931 [
>
2000 kg
collected]. Iron.
Forest City meteorite, Winnebago County, Iowa. Fell 2 May 1890
[c. 122 kg]. Stone (Chondrite).
a
Modocmeteorite, Scott County, Kansas. Witnessed fall 2 September 1902.
Stone (Chondrite).
a
Nuevo Laredo meteorite, Nuevo Laredo, Tamaulipas State, Mexico. Fell
1930. Stone (Achondrite).
a
