The document discusses geological time scales and radiometric dating techniques used to determine the age of the Earth. It provides information on relative and absolute dating, examples of commonly used radioactive isotopes and their half-lives, techniques like uranium-lead and rubidium-strontium dating, and studies that have dated rocks in Greenland to be approximately 3.6 billion years old. It also summarizes early estimates of the Earth's age, developments of quantitative dating methods involving radioactive decay, and how these methods determined the Earth is approximately 4.6 billion years old.
The document discusses geological time scales and radiometric dating techniques used to determine the age of the Earth. It provides information on relative and absolute dating, examples of commonly used radioactive isotopes and their half-lives, techniques like uranium-lead and rubidium-strontium dating, and studies that have dated rocks in Greenland to be approximately 3.6 billion years old. It also summarizes early estimates of the Earth's age, developments of quantitative dating methods involving radioactive decay, and how these methods determined the Earth is approximately 4.6 billion years old.
The document discusses geological time scales and radiometric dating techniques used to determine the age of the Earth. It provides information on relative and absolute dating, examples of commonly used radioactive isotopes and their half-lives, techniques like uranium-lead and rubidium-strontium dating, and studies that have dated rocks in Greenland to be approximately 3.6 billion years old. It also summarizes early estimates of the Earth's age, developments of quantitative dating methods involving radioactive decay, and how these methods determined the Earth is approximately 4.6 billion years old.
The document discusses geological time scales and radiometric dating techniques used to determine the age of the Earth. It provides information on relative and absolute dating, examples of commonly used radioactive isotopes and their half-lives, techniques like uranium-lead and rubidium-strontium dating, and studies that have dated rocks in Greenland to be approximately 3.6 billion years old. It also summarizes early estimates of the Earth's age, developments of quantitative dating methods involving radioactive decay, and how these methods determined the Earth is approximately 4.6 billion years old.
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Geological Time Scale
Few discussions in geology can occur without reference to geologic
time. Geologic time is often dicussed in two forms: Relative time ("chronostratic") -- subdivisions of the Earth's geology in a specific order based upon relative age relationships (most commonly, vertical/stratigraphic position). These subdivisions are given names, most of which can be recognized globally, usually on the basis of fossils. Absolute time ("chronometric") -- numerical ages in "millions of years" or some other measurement. These are most commonly obtained via radiometric dating methods performed on appropriate rock types. Radiometric Dating Rocks are made up of many individual crystals, and each crystal is usually made up of at least several different chemical elements such as iron, magnesium, silicon, etc. Most of the elements in nature are stable and do not change. However, some elements are not completely stable in their natural state. Some of the atoms eventually change from one element to another by a process called radioactive decay. If there are a lot of atoms of the original element, called the parent element, the atoms decay to another element, called the daughter element, at a predictable rate. The passage of time can be charted by the reduction in the number of parent atoms, and the increase in the number of daughter atoms The Radiometric Clocks There are now well over forty different radiometric dating techniques, each based on a different radioactive isotope. The term isotope subdivides elements into groups of atoms that have the same atomic weight. For example carbon has isotopes of weight 12, 13, and 14 times the mass of a nucleon, referred to as carbon-12, carbon-13, or carbon-14 (abbreviated as 12C, 13C, 14C). It is only the carbon-14 isotope that is radioactive. Some Naturally Occurring Radioactive Isotopes and their half-lives Radioactive Isotope Product Half-Life (Parent) (Daughter) (Years) Samarium-147 Neodymium-143 106 billion Rubidium-87 Strontium-87 48.8 billion Rhenium-187 Osmium-187 42 billion Lutetium-176 Hafnium-176 38 billion Thorium-232 Lead-208 14 billion Uranium-238 Lead-206 4.5 billion Potassium-40 Argon-40 1.26 billion Uranium-235 Lead-207 0.7 billion Beryllium-10 Boron-10 1.52 million Chlorine-36 Argon-36 300,000 Carbon-14 Nitrogen-14 5715 Uranium-234 Thorium-230 248,000 Thorium-230 Radium-226 75,400 The table below gives the ages, in billions of years, from twelve different studies using five different techniques on one particular rock formation in Western Greenland, the Amitsoq gneisses. Technique Age Range (billion years) uranium-lead 3.60±0.05 lead-lead 3.56±0.10 lead-lead 3.74±0.12 lead-lead 3.62±0.13 rubidium-strontium 3.64±0.06 rubidium-strontium 3.62±0.14 rubidium-strontium 3.67±0.09 rubidium-strontium 3.66±0.10 rubidium-strontium 3.61±0.22 rubidium-strontium 3.56±0.14 lutetium-hafnium 3.55±0.22 samarium-neodymium 3.56±0.20 (compiled from Dalrymple, 1991 A schematic representation of the uranium-238 decay chain, showing the longest-lived nuclides. Half-lives are given in each box. Solid arrows represent direct decay, while dashed arrows indicate that there are one or more intermediate decays, with the longest intervening half-life given below the arrow. The Age of the Earth How old is the Earth? 4.6 billion years (4,600,000,000 years)
Radiometric dating (Uranium, Thorium). Mass
spectrometer Early ideas of the age of the Earth: 1654 Archbishop Usher (Ireland), genealogy in Bible Earth was created October 26, 4004 BC, 9:00 am Earth was 6000 years old. Led to the Doctrine of Catastrophism: Earth was shaped by series of giant disasters. Had to fit many processes into a short time scale. 1770's, 1780's "Revolution" James Hutton, Father of Geology (Scotland) 1726-1797. Published Theory of the Earth in 1785. Hadrian's Wall built by Romans, after 1500 years no change. Suspected that Earth was much older. Slow processes shape earth. Mountains arise continuously as a balance against erosion and weathering Doctrine of Uniformitarianism: "Present is key to the past". The physical and chemical laws that govern nature are uniform Unconformity at Siccar Point, Scotland "No vestige of a beginning, no prospect of an end" How old is Earth? Quantitative scientific methods In 1897, Lord Kelvin assumed that the Earth was originally molten and calculated a date based on cooling through conduction and radiation. Age of Earth was calculated to be about 24-40 million years. Problem: Earth has an internal heat source (radioactive decay) In 1899 - 1901, John Joly (Irish) calculated the rate of delivery of salt to the ocean. River water has only a small concentration of salts. Rivers flow to the sea. Evaporative concentration of salts. Age of Ocean = Total salt in oceans (in grams) divided by rate of salt added (grams per year) Age of Earth was calculated to be 90-100 million years. Problems: no way to account for recycled salt, salt incorporated into clay minerals, salt deposits. Thickness of total sedimentary record divided by average sedimentation rates (in mm/yr). In 1860, calculated to be about 3 million years old. In 1910, calculated to be about 1.6 billion years old. Early measurements of maximum thickness of sediment ranged from 25,000 m to 112,000 m. With more recent mapping, thickness of fossiliferous rocks is at least 150,000 m. Sedimentation rates average about 0.3 m/1000 years. At this rate, the age of the first fossiliferous rocks is about 500 million years. Problems: did not account for past erosion or differences in sedimentation rates; also ancient sedimentary rocks are metamorphosed or melted. Charles Lyell 1800's compared amount of evolution shown by marine mollusks in the various series of the Tertiary System with the amount that had occurred since the beginning of the Pleistocene. Estimated 80 million years for the Cenozoic alone. Discovery of radioactivity by Henri Becquerel in 1896. In 1905, Rutherford and Boltwood used radioactive decay to measure the age of rocks and minerals. Uranium decay produces He, leading to a date of 500 million years. In 1907, Boltwood suspected that lead was the stable end product of the decay of uranium. Published the age of a sample of urananite based on Uranium-Lead dating. Date was 1.64 billion years. So far, oldest dated Earth rocks are 3.96 billion years. Older rocks include meteorites and moon rocks with dates on the order of 4.6 billion years. Moon rocks, highland ~ 4.5 by, mare basalt ~ 3.2 - 3.8 by Meteorites - older than 4.5 by Mass spectrograph was used after WWI (1918). Led to the discovery of over 200 isotopes. Many radioactive elements can be used as geologic clocks. Each element decays at its own nearly constant rate. Once this decay rate is known, geologists can estimate the length of time over which decay has been occurring by measuring the amount of radioactive parent and the amount of stable daughter elements. Example: Potassium-Argon dating. Why is the Earth younger than the moon and meteorites? Earth is geologically active. Has a hot, molten interior. Rocks are remelted and their internal clocks are reset.
Also, rocks on Earth's surface are acted on by erosion and
weathering. Rocks on Earth surface are not as old as the Earth, they are "recycled" rock materials Rocks broken down into sediment (gravel, sand, silt, clay). Sediment will turn into sedimentary rock over time. Older rocks are buried deeply under younger rocks. Where do we find the oldest rocks on Earth? Canadian Shield. (NW Territories near Great Slave Lake, 3.96 by). Gneiss. Narrows the gap between origin of Earth and first rocks to 640 million years. (Geotimes 12/1989). Before this, oldest rocks known were from Isukasia region of Greenland (3.8 by). Glaciers 2 miles thick scraped off young recycled rocks. Land rose 250 ft since ice was removed => more erosion. Isostasy Very old rocks are at the surface in the Canadian Shield area. Up to about 3.8 or 3.96 billion years old. Multicellular life did not appear until about 1 billion years ago. Before this, 3 billion years ago single celled life only. Hard parts like shells don't appear until 600 million years ago. (Trilobites) Earth's First 3.7 Billion Years I. IN THE BEGINNING THERE WAS A SINGULARITY. At first there was just Hydrogen. The Hydrogen condensed into billions of local large balls of superdense Hydrogen in which fusion reactions forming Helium began and stars were born. Other elements up to the atomic weight of Iron were produced in these stars. About 5 to 6 billion years ago. One of these stars began to run out of Hydrogen fuel. It expanded to a red giant and then collapsed on itself and exploded in a supernova. In this supernova, like billions that have occurred elsewhere in our Universe, all of the other elements were created. II. The mass of new matter again collapsed into a disk shape mass of dust and gas (a). The center became superheated and formed a new star, our sun (b). From this disk of matter the planets began to condense (c), according to the widely supported nebular hypothesis of Immanuel Kant and Pierre-Simon Laplace. The two strongest points in favor of this idea are: 1) that the disk began by rotating in one direction and the rotation of all of the planets around the sun follows the original disk; and 2) that because the disk flattened out as time progresses, all of the orbits of the planets (except Pluto) lie more or less in the same plane (d). Pluto is possibly a captured giant asteroid. III. The earth condensed in four basic steps. 1) It began to accrete from the nebular cloud as particles smashed into each other forming so-called planetesimals. These in turn collided with each other and as their mass grew began to gather material from the nebular disk. 2) As the mass of the Earth grew so did it's gravitational force and the Earth began to compress itself into a smaller and denser body. This happened about 4.5 billion years ago. 3) In the third step the compression itself began to heat the interior of the Earth; also there was heat generated by radioactive decay. The interior of the earth began to melt. Because iron is the heaviest of the common elements that make up the Earth, as the Earth began to melt droplets of melted iron began to sink towards the center of the earth, where they condensed. 4) Proceeding slowly at first it sped up to catastrophic proportions - hence it is called the iron catastrophe. Note that 3 and 4 in the figures to the right are cross sections. Earth Structure Thickness Density P-wave velocity Layer (km) (g/cm³ ) (km/sec) Continental crust avg. 35 2.6 - 2.8 6 Oceanic crust 5 - 12 3.0 - 3.5 7 Mohorovicic discontinuity (Moho) Mantle 2885 4.5 - 10 8 - 12 Gutenberg discontinuity Core (average) 3470 10.7 or 12 - Outer core 2250 - 8 - 10 (liquid) Inner core 1220 13.5 11 - 12 (solid) IV. However, the crust finally solidified by about 3.7 billion years ago. Gasses pouring out of volcanoes and fissures, along with lava, began to accumulate, perhaps added to by the impact of a few giant comets (which are mostly gas).
The gases that accumulated were those we still find coming out of volcanoes: Water vapor (H2O) Hydrogen chloride (HCl) Carbon Monoxide (CO) Carbon Dioxide (CO2) Nitrogen (N2)
These gases combined to form:
Methane (CH4) Ammonia (NH4) Hydrogen Cyanide (HCN) V. As the crust cooled water would condense and accumulate as oceans. This happened very soon after the crust solidified.
VI. LIFE EVOLVES
The origin of life is shrouded in mystery. But there have been significant steps towards some understanding. Making many complex organic molecules is the first step, but apparently not a difficult one. This was shown in the famous Miller-Urey experiments done in the 1950's. They planned to set up an experiment to see how complex organic molecules could be produced. Basically they mixed together gasses that they thought the primitive Earth would have in a jar and zapped the gases with an electrical spark. Complex organic good collected at the bottom of the jar. Included were amino acids, the building blocks of proteins. But no life. Regressi trangressi sesar Erosi