The Controversy about the Age of the Earth

Abstract

The determination of the age of the Earth is part of the question of how the Earth was formed and how it evolved to what we see around us today. It is a question of what the basic processes were that shaped the Earth, and caused it to evolve and harbor life. The long time scale of the Earth’s transformation is in proportion with the time scale for the evolution of the Sun and its energy source, and it is the time scale needed for the synthesis of the chemical elements. The synthesis of the elements and the energy of the stars are connected through nuclear fusion. So the slowness of nuclear fusion is one of the key issues here.