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Informationen zum Autor Patrick Wyse Jackson is a lecturer in Geology and curator of the Geological Museum in Trinity College, Dublin, and is a member of the International Commission on the History of Geology. Klappentext Investigates the methods used to determine the Earth's age from those with little scientific background to scientists in Earth sciences. Zusammenfassung This book investigates the methods used to determine the Earth's age! from James Ussher and John Lightfoot examining biblical chronologies! to Arthur Holmes and Clair Patterson investigating radioactive dating of rocks. It will be of interest to those with little scientific background! and students and scientists in the Earth sciences. Inhaltsverzeichnis List of illustrations; List of tables; Preface; Acknowledgements; 1. The ancients: early chronologies; 2. Biblical calculations; 3. Models of Aristolean infinity and sacred theories of the Earth; 4. Falling stones, salty oceans, and evaporating waters: early empirical measurements of the age of the Earth; 5. Thinking in layers: early ideas in stratigraphy; 6. An infinite and cyclical Earth and religious orthodoxy; 7. The cooling Earth; 8. Stratigraphic laws, uniformitarianism and the development of the geological column; 9. 'Formed stones' and their subsequent role in biostratigraphy and evolutionary theory; 10. The hour-glass of accumulated or denuded sediments; 11. Thermodynamics and the cooling Earth revisited; 12. Oceanic salination reconsidered; 13. Radioactivity: invisible geochronometers; 14. The universal problem and duck soup; Sources; Index.
