Deep time

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Deep time is the idea, held to be credible by natural researchers since the early 19th century, that the Earth is millions or billions of years old, rather than the few thousand that young Earth creationism claims.

Contents

[edit] History

The concept was first formally proposed by James Hutton, in 1788. Hutton and his various contemporaries challenged the then-standard concept of a 6,000 year old Earth by studying the geological strata and stating he could find no rational "beginning of time", if layers were consistently formed, a basis of Lyell's Uniformitarianism. The continuing process whereby rocks are eroded and new sedimentary rocks form out of the remains of older eroded rocks was previously known. Hutton however observed further this process takes so long that the Earth must be much older than a few thousand years. [1]

[edit] Evidence

See the main article on this topic: Evidence against a recent creation

Evidence for deep time includes:

  • Geological strata
  • Geological formations, like canyons cut by rivers, and the Triassic Cliffs cut by the sea.
  • Fossil records, though there is large dependance on the geological strata, for fossils to "prove" an age of the Earth.
  • Radiometric dating systems, which use isotopes to place the age of the Earth at 4.5 billion years.
  • Dating of the Sun and Moon
  • Dating of the formation of our Solar system
  • Evidence for the age of the Universe

[edit] Other uses

In cosmology, "deep time" can mean forecasts about the ultimate fate of the universe. Such forecasts often look trillions of years into the future, many many times the universe's current age.

[edit] See also

[edit] External links

[edit] References

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