AGE OF THE EARTH.

Manawatu Times, Volume XLVI, Issue 1969, 10 November 1921, Page 4

AGE OF THE EARTH.

Those who have been trying to convince themselves that this war-worn terrestrial sphere has about reached the termination of its revolutions, will read with interest the views expressed by eminent men at a recent meeting of the British Association at Edinburgh. They all believed that the earth is quite dreadfully old, and wilt, last to be quite incalculably older, for example, than Lord Kelvin thought. Lord Raleigh led the debate. The discovery of radium had disclosed a source of heat not known before, and this alone may make good the output of heat. It also upset calculations of the earth's present age, based on a supposed rate of cooling. The radium evidence is of this sort; The element uranium changes into radium, and through radium into one of the two sorts of lead. Presuming, as is likely, that all the lead has been produced from uranium, we get an age of 825,000,000 years. As to the future, the upshot is that radio-active methods of estimation “Indicate a moderate multiple of 1,000,000,000 years as the possible and probable duration of the earth’s crust as suitable for the habitation of human beings.” Both Professor Gregory, arguing from the saltncss of the sea, and Professor Eddington, arguing from a study of the variable stars, were believers in the loncevity theory.