50170 Faraday 08 Robert White

The Age of the Earth Robert S White ‘We find no vestige of a beginning,– no prospect of an end’, Hutton 17881 ‘I am the Alpha and the Omega, the First and the Last, the Beginning and the End.’ Rev. 22:13 Summary The best estimate for the age of the material which forms the Earth is 4,566 million years, which is accurate to within a few million years. The universe is three times older, at 13,700 million years. Modern humans extend back only a few thousandths of one per cent of the age of the Earth, although living organisms have been present on Earth throughout most of its history. I discuss the scientific basis of geological dating, historical and recent views on the age of the Earth, and some theological implications that follow from the biblical and scientific evidence. It might seem odd to need a paper on the age of the Earth at the beginning of the twenty-first century. The understanding of ‘deep About the Author Professor Robert White FRS is Professor of time’ which started in the Reformation and was widely accepted Geophysics in the Department of Earth amongst educated people by the 1850s marked a major change in Sciences, Cambridge University, where he perception of the place of humans in the universe.2 Not only were leads a research group investigating the humans a tiny speck in a vast universe, but they now occupied only Earth’s dynamic crust. Prof. White is also Associate Director of the Faraday Institute the tiniest part of an almost unimaginably long history, for almost for Science and Religion and Fellow of St all of which they were not even present. The seemingly never-end- Edmund’s College, Cambridge; a director of ing cyclicity of many geological processes highlighted in the quo- the John Ray Initiative, a Fellow of the Geological Society, and author of tation from Hutton at the head of this paper also seemed at first Christianity, Climate Change and sight to contradict the one-way progress of history that is charac- Sustainable Living (SPCK, 2007). teristic of the Bible accounts. Although these new views were accommodated easily at the time in the religious understanding of for different intervals of the geological history. Importantly, this people with a wide spectrum of beliefs, there have been attempts by only tells us the relative age of a rock layer in the global sequence, some Christians and Muslims since the latter part of the twentieth and not its absolute age. Dating by fossils is only useful for the last century to reverse the clock and espouse a very young age for the 10% of the Earth’s history (see Table). Earth despite the overwhelming scientific evidence to the contrary. The simplest method of calculating the absolute age of a rock is to use known cyclic changes, such as annual tree ring growth or Scientific Perspectives on the History of the Earth predictable variations in the Earth’s orbit that affect some charac- The Earth, and indeed the entire solar system, was formed from a teristic of the rock layers that are laid down, and then to count massive collision of meteoritic material which collected into dis- these cycles back in time starting from the present. Individual tree crete planetary bodies. The most basic method of geological dating ring widths vary according to local climate changes. If all the trees is to use the layering of a rock sequence to define the order in in one region exhibit the same climate-controlled patterns, tree which they were formed, known as their stratigraphy. This is con- rings can be counted back beyond the lifespan of individual trees ceptually straightforward: younger rocks usually lie above older by finding older timber with sufficient overlap to correlate the dis- rocks, especially if they are sedimentary in origin, unless subse- tinctive tree-ring pattern from the younger to the older. A unique quently they have been disturbed. An important extension to this tree-ring chronology has been built from trees in central Germany ordering is that rock units of the same age can be correlated around extending back beyond 8400 BC and similar chronologies have the world, provided they carry some unique identifier which been developed elsewhere. changes through time. Fossils are an excellent example of such a Annual layers are also found in coral growth rings, in lake sedi- marker: they can be used to ‘tag’ the age of that rock to be the same ments and in snow layers accumulated in continental interiors, such as all others around the world which carry the same fossils. This as the Greenland and the Antarctic icecaps. In Greenland, deep dating is improved if assemblages of different fossils are used coring has penetrated ice more than 200,000 years old, while in the rather than just single species, because different species survived Antarctic a 3190 metre (10,500 feet) core has reached ice 740,000 years old.3 Counting annual layers in the uppermost ice is unam- 1 Hutton, J. ‘Theory of the Earth’, Transactions of the Royal Society of Edinburgh (1788) 1, 209–305. 2 See Roberts, M. B. ‘Genesis Chapter One and Geological Time from Hugo Grotius 3 North Greenland Ice Core Project Members ‘High-resolution record of northern hemi- and Marin Mersenne to William Conybeare and Thomas Chalmers (1620 to 1825)’, In sphere climate extending into the last interglacial period’, Nature (2004) 431, 147–151 Myth and Geology, Geological Society of London Special Publication (2007) and (reports ages back to 123,000); EPICA Community Members ‘Eight glacial cycles Gould, S. J. Time’s Arrow, Time’s Cycle: Myth and Metaphor in the Discovery of from an Antarctic ice core’, Nature (2004) 429, 623–628 (reports ice 740,000 years old Geological Time, Harvard University Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts (1987), 222pp. sampled at the base of an Antarctic ice core). FARADAY PAPER NO 8 biguous, but at greater depths, as layers become compacted, it is pos- within 2%, and uncertainties in the dates derived from radiometric sible that some annual layers may be overlooked, or that near the decay are of a similar magnitude of a few per cent. base of the ice sheet remelting or folding has distorted the annual lay- The span of half-lives makes it possible to date rocks of differ- ering. Conservative estimates of the errors in counting annual layers ing ages by choosing an appropriate isotopic decay system, increase from about 2% at 11,000 years to 10% at 150,000 years ago. although the precision of the measurement limits reliable ages to a Perhaps more surprisingly, changes in the Earth’s orbit cause maximum of 5–6 half-lives. The best-known technique using car- long-term cyclicity in climate patterns, known as Milankovitch bon-14 is useful for archaeological and recent geological studies, cycles. Eccentricity of the Earth’s orbit round the sun produces but is of no use for dating the demise of the dinosaurs (60 million 100,000 and 413,000 year cycles, tilt of the Earth’s axis generates years), or the age of the Earth. The most accurate methods in cur- 40,000 year cyclicity, and precession of the Earth’s axis of rotation rent use for dating geological rocks are uranium-lead and argon- creates cycles at approximately 19,000 and 23,000 years. 40/argon-39 methods. These both rely on two different decay sys- Identification of these cycles by their rhythmic climatic effect on tems, which enables internal consistency checks to be made that no ancient sediments allows precision dating back to 30 million years.4 isotopes have been gained or lost. A final example of irregular cyclic changes that can be used to date rocks is their magnetic polarity. Fluid motions in the Earth’s ‘The oldest putative biogenic material, inferred from car- liquid outer core create a dynamo which generates a global dipole bon-13 depleted graphite, is 3,850 million years old’ magnetic field roughly aligned with the Earth’s axis of rotation. The magnetic field reverses its polarity on average 2–3 times per mil- The age of the Earth has been determined as 4,566 ± 2 million lion years. Since rocks bearing magnetised minerals record the years using the uranium-lead decay system, which has a suitably direction of the magnetic field at the time they were deposited, the long half-life. On its own, knowledge of the present daughter/par- polarity reversals can be recognised and used to date the volcanic ent ratios in lead ores found on Earth only tells you the age since basement of the seafloor back 170 million years. This technique they separated from the parent mantle of the Earth. The trick in was the basis of recognising seafloor spreading, leading quickly to using them to date the Earth itself is to measure the uranium-lead the plate tectonics theory which in the 1960s revolutionised geo- ratios found in meteoritic material which has recently fallen to earth logical interpretation of the Earth’s history. and to compare the present ratios with those. Because such mete- Radiometric dating remains the most useful method for dating orites have remained isolated as they travelled through space since the older rocks found on Earth, and indeed the age of the Earth the formation of the solar system, they record the pristine isotopic itself. It relies on the fact that many atoms that occur in nature have ratios of the material which initially accreted to form the Earth. unstable nuclei (the ‘parent’ nuclides) that decay spontaneously to Strictly therefore the age of the Earth we measure is the age of for- a lower energy state (the ‘daughter’ nuclides): because this radioac- mation of the material which formed the solar system.

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