Deep time

Don't you look at James Hutton — James Hutton ain't gon' save you.

Poetry of reality Science

We must know. We will know.

Physics Chemistry Biology Astronomy Geology

A view from the shoulders of giants.

Radioactivity Absence of evidence The Astonishing Hypothesis HAARP Bedford Level experiment Galaxy Hierarchy of evidence Michael Mann v - t - e

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

History

The concept was first formally proposed by James Hutton, a Scottish geologist, 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. Although he was an absolutely terrible writer, his friends translated his observations into something at least somewhat readable so it could reach a broader audience.

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 dependence on the geological strata, for fossils to "prove" an age of the Earth.
• Radiometric dating systems, which use the constant rate of radioactive decay of unstable nuclides in the Earth's crust 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

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.

See also

• Age of the Earth
• Branches of science you have to ignore to believe in Young Earth Creationism
• Lower limit on the age of the universe
• Radioactive decay
• Science
• Scientific method
• The incontrovertible evidence for common descent
• James Ussher — who first claimed to have calculated the age of the Earth based on the Bible, and is the source of young Earth creationism

• 101 evidences for a young age of the earth and the universe — a "side by side" rebuttal.

External links

• Deep Time: A History of the Earth -Interactive Infographic
• Deep Time Walk: A History of the living Earth
• Working Group: The Archives of Deep-Time Sciences

References

This science-related article is a stub.
You can help RationalWiki by expanding it.