AGE OF THE EARTH

Hawke's Bay Herald-Tribune, Issue 62, 31 March 1937, Page 6

AGE OF THE EARTH

Estimates Not Based On Genuine Facts

SCIENTISTS REBUFFED Sir Ambrose Fleming, . whose invention of the thermionic valve made wireless telephony possible, declared recently that estimates , made by leading sciefttists as to the age of the world vyere pased on. assumptions which had not been, deraonstrated as genuine seientifie truths, says the Manchester Guardian. - . Addressing the Viotoria lnstitute, ^ of which he is presideiit, he said: "Ihe confident assertion' of a 'few eminent seientifie men of the validity of the results of these age determinations is. sufiicient to eivcourage' the general I'rcss and popular writers to . put them t'orward as definitely ascertained facts. It would seem that the great ages for the stratified rocks and their fossil contents derived from radioactive measureuients must be received with a considerable degree of reserve and not admitted as giving us an unquestionable solution of the problem of the time.of. first appearance of life upon the earth." Sir Ambi'ose said that there seemed to be a tendency on the part of some seientifie .writers to assume that religious . thought, based on statements in the Boob of Genesis, was pledged to the opinion that the date of the creation of the earth had been fixed. by Ossher's chronology at about 4000 B.C.

"The genealogical stateinents in the tifth chapter of Genesis," he said, 'Jin cbnjunction -witb other data tell-us qothing but the date,, of ; appearance, of the Adamic man made in the image.of God, and no information is given to us to enable u!s to interpret the 'days' of creation in terms of our time reckoning in soiar years oi the date of the 'beginning' mentiohed in the tirsfverse of tlie Rible- Nothing is there stated which cap confiict with any certamty. ascertained faet's -'of" seientifie -research-" Sir Ambrose'' said that it must be borrie in mind in estimating the age of the earth that the assumption of an uninterrupted continuity in nature was an hypothesis and not a certaib deduction f'roin facts. It was perfeotly clear that we were uot in possession of any generaily agreed seientifie mbdes of geological time 'mcasurement, but ouiy with estimates which were based for the most part on perso'ual predilection or guesses' at truth.' .

He pointod out discrepancies in. the results obtained troni tbeories based on the saJinity oi the oceaus — giving an age oi 89,000,000 in one case "Moderu computation from radio-active transformations gives ages for the earth vastiy in excess of the longost ohtained from the salinity of the sons," jie "II these radio ages are voj ua, the p.v, sent oceans of the' world have been accumulating salt for far greater periods of time than 89,000.000 years and Ibey should by now have beeome as .salt as ths Dead Sea," ■ i