A New Age for the Universe?

Authors

Darrel Hoff, University of Northern IowaFollow

Document Type

Article

Abstract

The question of the age of the earth, the solar system, stars galaxies and the whole universe have intrigued man for a long time. The story of Bishop Ussher's use of biblical chronology in the early 1600s to date the creation at 4004 B. C. is the story of the earliest attempt to arrive at an answer to this question. The work of geologists, and physicists during the 1800s called this date into serious question. Investigations based on stratigraphy, salination of the oceans, and heat flow from a cooling earth put the age much greater than Ussher's estimate. Although these methods overlooked some possible sources of error, this combined work put the age of the earth between 40 and 400 million years. By inference, the universe must have been older than that.

Publication Date

April 1982

Journal Title

Iowa Science Teachers Journal

Volume

19

Issue

1

First Page

10

Last Page

13

Copyright

© Copyright 1982 by the Iowa Academy of Science

Language

en

File Format

application/pdf

Recommended Citation

Hoff, Darrel (1982) "A New Age for the Universe?," Iowa Science Teachers Journal: Vol. 19: No. 1, Article 8.
Available at: https://scholarworks.uni.edu/istj/vol19/iss1/8