XPost: sci.physics.relativity   
   From: nospam@de-ster.demon.nl   
      
   The Starmaker  wrote:   
      
   > The Starmaker wrote:   
   > >   
   > > The Starmaker wrote:   
   > > >   
   > > > At Charles Darwin's time the age of the Earth was thought to be about   
   > > > 75,000 years old.  (you won't believe how someone else came up with that   
   > > > number)   
   > > >   
   > > > He was in a rush to publish his book and noticed the numbers were   
   > > > wrong...   
   > > > ...he knew   
   > > > eventually somebody would have   
   > > > figured out you cannot change a fish to a man in 75,000 years.   
   > > >   
   > > > So he, 'made up a number'!   
   > > >   
   > > > Then when he published his book, (origin of species 1859) he wrote the   
   > > > age of the earth to be   
   > > > 306,662,400 years old.   
   > > >   
   > > > The equiptment he needed to determine the age of the earth wasn't   
   > > > invented untill 1905 using radioactive decay.   
   > > >   
   > > > So, he made up any number to fit the facts of his book. He lied. But how   
   > > > come nobody out there sez he lied????   
   > > >   
   > > > What else did Charles Darwin make up? the WHOLE book Origin of the   
   > > > Species????   
   > >   
   > > "Charles Darwin Theory determines what he observes."   
   > >   
   >   
   >   
   > Hell, Newton came out with the age of the earth at 50,000..   
   >   
   > who knows how he came out with that number?   
      
   See his   
   "Scala graduum Caloris. Calorum Descriptiones & signa.",   
   published anonymously.   
   The problem with it is that the Earth doesn't cool like a cup of tea.   
      
   > How about that number 75,000????   
   >   
   >   
   > In 1779 the Comte du Buffon tried to obtain a value for the age of Earth   
   > using an experiment: he created a small globe that resembled Earth in   
   >  composition and then measured its rate of cooling. This led him to   
   > estimate that Earth was about 75,000 years old.   
      
   Same errors as Newton.   
   Before the development of thermodynamics   
   things like temperature, energy content,   
   and the various heat conduction processes were poorly understood.   
      
   > The age of the earth is the exact number of the age of the   
   > universe....eventually it will catch up with it.   
      
   The correct answer to the cooling problem   
   was obtained by Kelvin about a hundred years later.   
   It is some tens of millions of years.   
   Kelvin established a sharp conflict between the physical timescale   
   and the needs of geologists for much longer times.   
      
   Finally, in 1904, Rutherford got it right   
   by also taking radioactive heat into account,   
      
   Jan   
      
   --- SoupGate-DOS v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)