The Chronologers' Quest

The Search for the Age of the Earth

Patrick Wyse Jackson

310 pages, parution le 17/08/2006

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Résumé

The debate over the age of the Earth has been ongoing for over two thousand years, and has pitted physicists and astronomers against biologists, religious philosophers against geologists. The Chronologers' Quest tells the fascinating story of our attempts to determine the age of the Earth. This book investigates the many novel methods used in the search for the Earth's age, from James Ussher and John Lightfoot examining biblical chronologies, Comte de Buffon and Lord Kelvin determining the length of time for the cooling of the Earth, to the more recent investigations of Arthur Holmes and Clair Patterson into radioactive dating of rocks and meteorites. The Chronologers' Quest is a readable account of the measurement of geological time. It will be of great interest to a wide range of readers, from those with little scientific background, to students and scientists in a wide range of the earth sciences.

Sommaire

The ancients: early chronologies
Biblical calculations
Models of Aristolean infinity and Sacred theories of the Earth
Falling stones, salty oceans, and evaporating waters: early empirical measurements of the age of the Earth
Thinking in layers: early ideas in stratigraphy
An infinite and cyclical Earth and religious orthodoxy
The cooling Earth
Stratigraphic laws, uniformitarianism and the development of the geological column
'Formed stones' and their subsequent role in biostratigraphy and evolutionary theory
The hour-glass of accumulated or denuded sediments
Thermodynamics and the cooling Earth revisited
Oceanic salination reconsidered
Radioactivity: invisible geochronometers
The universal problem and duck soup

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Caractéristiques techniques

	PAPIER
Éditeur(s)	Cambridge University Press
Auteur(s)	Patrick Wyse Jackson
Parution	17/08/2006
Nb. de pages	310
Format	15 x 23
Couverture	Broché
Poids	590g
Intérieur	Noir et Blanc
EAN13	9780521813327
ISBN13	978-0-521-81332-7