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How Old Is The Earth

The document describes how 19th century scientists like Edmond Halley and John Joly used the salt content of the oceans to estimate the age of the Earth, with Joly calculating it must be around 65 million years old, but we now know his assumptions were incorrect as he did not account for salt leaving the oceans through various processes, and today scientists date the Earth to be approximately 4.6 billion years old based on more accurate evidence and modeling.

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Fenazi Bilal
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102 views8 pages

How Old Is The Earth

The document describes how 19th century scientists like Edmond Halley and John Joly used the salt content of the oceans to estimate the age of the Earth, with Joly calculating it must be around 65 million years old, but we now know his assumptions were incorrect as he did not account for salt leaving the oceans through various processes, and today scientists date the Earth to be approximately 4.6 billion years old based on more accurate evidence and modeling.

Uploaded by

Fenazi Bilal
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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Download as PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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How Old is the Earth

Today we will replicate


how nineteenth century
scientists used the
saltiness of the ocean
to estimate the age of
the Earth.
Background
Edmond Halley (1656-1742) is most famous for the comet
named in his honour, but in 1715 he proposed an explanation
for the saltiness of seawater. He thought that rain dissolved salt
out of the ground and then rivers carried it to the sea where it
gradually accumulated over time.

In 1899, an Irish geologist, John Joly (1857-1933) argued that if


one knew how much salt was in the ocean and the rate at which
salt was being added by rivers each year, one could calculate
how long it had taken for ocean salt to accumulate and hence
the age of the oceans and presumably the Earth too. Joly
focused his work on sodium (Na), which is one of the two
elements in seawater salt (NaCl).
Annual river flow Volume of World’s Oceans
volume into the 1,370,000,000 km3
oceans
30,000 km3

Sodium makes up 1%
(1pph) of seawater by Sodium makes up,
volume on average, 7 ppm
of riverwater by
volume
Ideas to Ponder
• How much water is there in the oceans
• How much sodium is there in the oceans
• How much water enters the oceans every year
from rivers and streams
• How much sodium enters the oceans every year
from rivers and streams
• How long would it take for that much salt to enter
the oceans from the rivers
Was He Right???
Nope.

What happened 65 million years ago?

How old is the Earth?


Was He Right???
Joly’s reasoning is based on several incorrect
assumptions.

The main one is that salt stays put once in the ocean.
Salt leaves the oceans via plate tectonics, deposition in
rocks and living things, and transfer onto land through
sea spray. Joly also incorrectly assumed that salt input
is constant. In fact it changes as the types and age of
rock affect the rate of weathering. Finally, Joly assumed
that the Earth looks much today like it did when it
formed.
Was He Right???
The percentage of salt is actually in a state of
equilibrium – it is constant.

All this means that Joly’s figure for the age of the Earth
is a great underestimate.

So how old is the Earth?

About 4.6 billion years.


Questions
1. Why does the ocean not “overflow”?
2. Why is the ocean not becoming saltier with
time?
3. What is the age of the Earth?
4. Joly was wrong. He didn’t account for certain
factors – some he didn’t think about. Others
science didn’t know about yet. So is it bad for
scientists to be wrong? Explain your thoughts in
3 – 5 sentences.

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