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VOL. 17, No. 1 A PUBLICATION OF THE GEOLOGICAL SOCIETY OF AMERICA JANUARY 2007 John Perry’s Neglected Critique of Kelvin’s Age for the Earth: A Missed Opportunity in Geodynamics Inside: SECTION MEETINGS South-Central–North-Central Joint Meeting, p. 12 Cordilleran, p. 16 Penrose Conference Report, p. 23 Field Forum Report, p. 27 Penrose Conference Scheduled, p. 28 It’s Not Just Software ... It’s RockWare. For Over 24 Years. RockWorks™ The Geochemist’s Workbench™ 3D Subsurface Data Aqueous Geochemical Modeling Management, Analysis, and • Speciation/saturation indices Visualization • Eh/pH and activity diagrams All-in-one tool that allows you • Piper/Stiff/Durov and other to visualize, interpret and water chemistry diagrams present your surface and • Mineral dissolution/precipitation sub-surface data. 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Image of convection simulation or issues, and they must be understandable to all in the by G. Houseman using visualization software provided by earth science community. Submit manuscripts to science J. Schmalzl. See “John Perry’s neglected critique of Kelvin’s editors Gerald M. Ross, [email protected], or Stephen Johnston, [email protected]. age for the Earth: A missed opportunity in geodynamics” by England et al., p. 4–9. GSA TODAY (ISSN 1052-5173 USPS 0456-530) is published 11 times per year, monthly, with a combined April/May issue, by The Geological Society of America, Inc., with offices at 3300 Penrose Place, Boulder, Colorado. Mailing address: P.O. Box 9140, Boulder, CO 80301-9140, USA. Periodicals postage paid SCIENCE ARTICLE at Boulder, Colorado, and at additional mailing offices. Postmaster: Send address changes to GSA Today, GSA Sales 4 John Perry’s neglected critique of Kelvin’s age for the Earth: A missed and Service, P.O. 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Department of Geological Sciences and Cooperative Institute Fourier laid the groundwork for the mathematical analysis of for Research in Environmental Sciences, University of Colorado, the flow of heat in his treatise Théorie Analytique de la Chaleur Boulder, Colorado 80309, USA; Frank Richter, Department of (Fourier, 1822), and he made arguments that the Earth must be the Geophysical Sciences, 5734 S. Ellis Ave. Chicago, Illinois cooling (Fourier, 1827), with which Lyell was certainly familiar 60637, USA (Lyell, 1830, p. 140–141). Kelvin first wrote on heat when he was 16, clarifying some of Fourier’s mathematics, and he first addressed the age of the Earth in 1844 when he showed that, if one were to assume that the Earth is a solid body cooling from ABSTRACT an initially high temperature, measurement of the rate of heat Many readers know the tale of how William Thomson (later loss from its surface would place bounds on its age. Lord Kelvin) calculated the age of the Earth from physical prin- Kelvin imagined the Earth to have solidified from an origi- ciples and adhered for over 50 years to an estimate that was far nally molten state, such that its initial condition was of uniform younger than geologists’ estimates, despite the virtually unani- temperature, T0, with its surface maintained at a constant tem- mous opposition of the geological community of the time. The perature for all time. Under these assumptions, temperature prevalent version of this