THE AGE OF THE EARTH.

Taihape Daily Times, 15 August 1919, Page 6

THE AGE OF THE EARTH.

_ . VARIATION IN ESTIMATES. HEAT PRODUCED BY RADIUM. .The heat produced by radium is becoming of considerable importance in estimating the age of the earth. Discussing the matter in Auckland recently, in the course of his lecture on radium, ‘Professor G. Owen stated that Vl-a.dium was widely distributed throughout the earth’g crust_ One cubic mile of the earth’s crust contained‘ 3710. of radium. The late Lord (Kelvin assumed that the earth was once in a molten condition, and taking the known values of the therzwil conductivity of the crust, he arrived at the result that a period of 40,000,000 years had elapsed since the earth’s crust solidified. Geologists, however, insisted, from the thickness of various geological strata and other considerations that the earth’S Crust was from 100,000,000 to 150,000,000 years old. This discrepancy could not be accounted for, but the presence of radium in the earth ’s crust enabled us to extend Lord Kelvin’s figure so as to reconcile it with the figure given by geologists. In fact, said the lecturer, calculations of the age of the earth, based upon radio-active phenomena led to the result that the crust of the , earth ‘might be 500,000,000 years old. The discrepancy between this figural and the figure calculated by geologists was at present inexplicable. Biologists, however, hailed with pleasure the higher figure, for they required it to account for the present state of“ organic evolution.

The lecturer stated {flat Professor Jply suspected that the amount of

radium in the earth wag more than enough to keep it from getting cooler, and that in consequence there was going on in the interior of the earth an accumulation of heat which might some clay burst its bonds and convert the whole globe into :1 fiery mass_ Thus is might be that, instead of the universe being, as it were, 21 clock slowly rull’ning.down,‘ its ultimate fate being the stillness of death, radium, acting as a. rejuvenating force, would start the earth on its long journey of incandescence, cooling, solidification, and original evolution. i