Abstract
The uranium, thorium and lead dating methods completely changed scientists’ idea of the age of the Earth from about 90 million years to more than 2 billion years.
As there is not in human observation proper means for measuring the waste of land upon the globe, it is hence inferred, that we cannot estimate the duration of what we see at present, nor calculate the period at which it had begun; so that, with respect to human observation, this world has neither a beginning nor an end.
James Hutton—1785
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2016 Springer International Publishing Switzerland
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Hay, W.W. (2016). Putting Numbers on Geologic Ages . In: Experimenting on a Small Planet. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-27404-1_5
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-27404-1_5
Published:
Publisher Name: Springer, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-319-27402-7
Online ISBN: 978-3-319-27404-1
eBook Packages: Earth and Environmental ScienceEarth and Environmental Science (R0)