Comments on: A Hot Young Earth: My Answer to the Annual Edge Question

By: The Voyage to Find Out How Earth Was Born «

The Voyage to Find Out How Earth Was Born « — Sat, 11 Aug 2012 15:58:10 +0000

[...] beyond the orbit of Mars lie fragments of worlds that might have been. Back when Earth was still forming and the moon was a molten ball—some 4.5 billion years ago—the chunks of rock and ice there [...]

By: edward macguire

edward macguire — Mon, 06 Feb 2012 19:53:51 +0000

A question : Venus is similar in size to earth; why no evidence of plate tectonics on venus?
There is evidence for tectonics on mars ; is there any calculation as to when it stopped on mars?

By: Lee Bishop

Lee Bishop — Fri, 03 Feb 2012 04:31:46 +0000

I saw a talk recently by UW-Madison geoscience Prof. John Valley, who provides evidence that the surface of the early earth was cool enough for liquid water to exist a mere 160 million years after its formation. Talk was mind-melting.

Video of similar talk here: http://vimeo.com/14253024
Paper here: http://www.geology.wisc.edu/zircon/Valley2002Cool_Early_Earth.pdf

By: WBenson

WBenson — Sat, 28 Jan 2012 03:33:35 +0000

Kelvin, a religious Scottish Presbyterian, was a declared enemy of Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution. His friend and colleague engineer Fleeming Jenkin collaborated with Kelvin in having Earth and Sun papers read at British Society for the Advancement of Sciences meeting. Kelvin’s original Sun paper, if I remember correctly, came out about 1858 and as stated above, the earth paper was published in 1862. In 1867 Jenkin, who shared Kelvin’s views, published an anonymous negative review of Darwin’s Origin of Species that touched both on the difficulties with natural selection (using a disturbingly racist thought experiment of a type typical of the epoch) and presented Kelvin’s conclusions of the age of the earth, less than 500 million but perhaps as little as 20 million years. Darwin was apparently unaware of Kelvin’s calculations and in later editions of the Origin, while continuing to stress natural selection, placed greater emphasis on Lamarckian inheritance to speed up evolution. As time passed Kelvin and his close associates reduced the time available for life on earth, and toward the end of the 19th century were defending spans of 10 to 20 million years. These conservative estimates were widely broadcast and even Mark Twain mentioned them, and the authority of Kelvin, in a 1903 essay.

Kelvin seemed particularly incensed with the idea of evolution by natural selection. He also defended panspermia, the idea that pieces of life (moss, for example) could have been knocked off some other world and transported to earth. In a provocative recent paper Leonard Wilson (2010. “Religious assumptions in Lord Kelvin’s estimates of the earth’s age.” Earth Sciences History, 29: 187-121) suggests that Kelvin knew almost from the beginning that the assumptions of his temperature model were wrong, that empirical data denied that the earth was solid through to its core (just looking at volcanic lava suggests that it isn’t). The unflattering suggestion is that Kelvin faked his model, either through self-delusion or as a willful hoax, to defend his faith from the unbelief that Darwinian evolution had inspired. As Wilson put it, “Kelvin’s primary aim was to destroy Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution by natural selection . . .”.

By: Paul

Paul — Wed, 25 Jan 2012 20:17:40 +0000

The estimate I have seen for tidal heating of the earth’s interior (as opposed to tidal energy dissipated in oceans) is 200 GW. This is small compared to geothermal heat flow (47 TW).

By: Erwin Van Den Broecke

Erwin Van Den Broecke — Wed, 25 Jan 2012 14:46:07 +0000

I have a problem with everyones static presumptions. The fact of the matter is that all of the explainations presume that the heat source within our planet came from it’s original formation and that only cooling has taken place since then (and as suggested when these theories seemed inconsistent, perhaps radioactivity explained thr extended heat source, which it undoubtly does). Therefore, it would seem that determining the age of the earth would be as simple as applying Kelvin’s thermodynamic theories to a stable cooling mass in space. I would not presume to argue the age that has been placed upon our home, since carbon dating provides irrefutable evidence of the age of the oldest terrestrial material in existence at around the 4 billion mark (for this example I don’t think I need to be worried about absolute precision). The part I have a problem with is that the Earths temperature is presumed to have been stable and continually decreasing throughout all these billions of years. It would seem to me that the example of hot Turkey or even the glass bottle is based on this assumption and is completely misleading. I believe an enormous can of paint would be a far better example of the convective flow of heat escaping from our sphere. Here is my explanation of this example; when you take a can of paint of one colour and add a second contrasting colour, it seems to take forever for the swirl of the added colour to finally completely disappear in the helical spiral that appears as you are stirring the paints with a stick. When you enlarge this can of paint to make it the size of Earth then you must also enlarge (or increase) the amount of time it will take to complete the process. However, this model would still presume that the planets heat was at a maximum during its creation and steadily cooled since then. But the fact of the matter is that we are sitting on a gigantic ball of Iron (mainly), along with all the other less common elements churning around inside of an enormous ball of rock. We travel around the sun the whole while spinning on a tilting axes with a large agitator (the moon) providing a very large paddle to help keep stirring this broth constantly. The result (it would seem to me) is that you have an extremely large body of abrasive elements constantly grinding away at each other that provides a constant heating effect that will continue to produce more heat nearly indefinitely. Thus, any model of thermodynamics used to explain the age of the planet will be flawed unless it takes into account that the Earth is not just simply a big Turkey that has been set out to cool! It is an enormous friction generator that has been constantly grinding away (creating internal heat) since it’s beginning and will continue to do so until the moon flies off and the planet stops spinning or old Sol goes supernova, whichever comes first!

By: Old Geezer

Old Geezer — Tue, 24 Jan 2012 21:06:12 +0000

I believe the correct number is 4, 567,oo6,000. Now is everybody happy?

By: EW Runde

EW Runde — Tue, 24 Jan 2012 20:47:08 +0000

“It turned out that Kelvin was wrong, but not because his equations were ugly or inelegant. They were flawless. The problem lay in the model of the Earth to which Kelvins applied his equations.”

Ingenious! Wrong model, wrong conclusions! Perhaps we should at least examine the scientific evidence for a young earth (“creationist”). Rather than presumptuously throwing out that model as impossible, reconsider it as a possibility despite the cries of those opposed to the idea. After all, if science only listened to the opinions of current consensus rather than critically considering reasonable alternatives, we would not have modern science at all!

By: Mark Dow

Mark Dow — Mon, 23 Jan 2012 03:24:10 +0000

@Don Hudson: More specifically, heat due to friction from tidal distortion (tidal heating), the effect of a gradient of gravitational attraction.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tidal_heating
I can’t find an estimate of the amount of tidal heating compared to radioactive decay in the earth. I had always assumed it was relatively small.

By: Vasanth BR

Vasanth BR — Sun, 22 Jan 2012 09:17:08 +0000

Hindu Science, determined around 3102 BC, that the earth’s age is 4.32 billion years. Western Science, as it continuously refines its calculations, is slowly approaching the Hindu Science figure.