Evening Republican, Volume 18, Number 92, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 17 April 1914 — NEW IDEA OF EARTH’S AGE [ARTICLE]

NEW IDEA OF EARTH’S AGE

Radium Has Caused Change in Scientist’s Oponions During the Past Five Years. If such an authority as Prof. Arthur , Holmes of the Imperial college, South Kensington, London, has any weight at all with people, the discovery of radium means that geologists must change their calculations materially as to the age of the earth If they wish to be taken seriously. He says, according to the New Press, it is a well known fact that if the proportion of radium in the interior of the earth is in any way equal to the radium in the rocks of the earth's surface the earth will, not grow colder, as has always been taught, but it ought to be growing hotter. Calculations, however, show that the distribution of radium as it is found would be more than enough to keep the temperature of the earth Thorium and uranium also supply a, great amount of heat and must be taken into account. In order that the earth should be neither growing hotter nor cooling at a rate allowed by the radio-active elements as they disintegrate it is necessary, he says, to assume that the earth’s store of radium be concentrated near the surface. The radioactive elements are found most abun-. dantly in acid rocks, and their more basic associates are less rich. These acid rocks are characteristic of only the outermost zones of the crust, and there are many reasons for believing that with depth the nonacid rocks are predominant. Earthquakes and similar terrestrial events have provided facts from which the condition of the earth’s interior may be deduced with confidence. First, there is the crust zone, which has an approximate thickness of 30 miles. Then comes the stone zone, something under 100 miles thick, and, finally, the central iron core of the earth, with a density eight times greater than waiter. Meteorites contain radium, and Professors Strutt and Holmes say that these meteors contain the proof that no radium is found in the stone zone or inner core. < .It is supposed that the earth began, of course, as a* misty, nebulous mass jand that it has become the great mass it Is by the capture of meteors and greater masses floating in space during the ages. It is very unlikely that the earth was ever, as a whole, in a molten condition. It is surmised by several English savants that the internal heat probably arose in a great measure from the condensation of the .. mass as it grew. The temperature would slowly rise until the fusion point of certain of the earth’s constituents was reached. Then the pockets and tongues thus formed would fend to move away from the center, and the less heavy, stony substances would be squeezed outward relatively to a network of the heavier, rigid metals. Surrounding the metallic core a thick zone of sandy rocks would be formed and the radio-active materials would be concentrated in the stony layers. When the oceans and the atmospheres were produced the sediment rocks appeared for the first time, and then came the earth’s crust with the rocks that contain most of the radium and other radio-active elements. Before the advent of radium geologists did not recognize the difficulties presented by the peculiar makeup of the earth’s crust Radium did not create this difficulty, but it certainly emphasized it in the attem tion of scientists. It can hardly be said that radium has given a blank check on the bang of time, for its discovery not only de* stroyed all the old measurements of the earth’s heat, but it necessitated # new method for getting at it. Every kind of radio-active mineral, as well as radium, may be regarded as a selfcontained hour glass; the radio-actjva emanations, such as helium, and residues such as lead, slowly accumulate at the expense of their ultimate parent uranium. The geologist, who five years ago was embarrassed by the brevity of the time allowed to him for the evolution * of the earth’s crust, is now still more embarrassed by the overabundance of time that now confronts him. The recognition of radium means difflcuh ties for the geologist and the absolute overthrow of every acknowledged theory as to the earth’s age and de velopment The age of the earth, aa cording to what happens to be radium, varies from . 5,000.000,000 to 3,000, 000,000 years, but what matters a feW thousand million of years among go ologists? % < ■ ■