How old is the planet Earth?

I think it’s pretty darn old!

6 billion or something to that effect.

Uh…have you tried googling the stats and theories? lol :-)

4.5 to be exact. ;-)

Hmm…I excelerated things by a couple of billion.

I’d rather just ask you people and get a feel for this site. :) I’m new here and I’m trying to learn how to navigate.

But thanks for your input.

Welcome to Fluther.

Welcome!

Welcome to Fluther.

It’s as old as the hills. Literally!

But I’ll go with the commonly accepted 4.5 billion years, give or take, since it’s what I learned in school, and even Wikipedia agrees with that.

Welcome. Old as dirt. Old as the hills? Don’t know about that…how old do you think it is?

6,010 years.

@Mamradpivo Multiply your answer by ten to the 6th power and you will closer to the Earth’s age.

Philosophers have speculated upon the age of the Earth since time immemorial and their beliefs have ranged greatly. The Brahmins of India regarded the Earth to be eternal. The Archbishop Ussher of Ireland in 1654 deduced from his scriptures study that the creation of the Earth took place on 10–26-4004 B.C. at 9:00 A.M.

The truth of the Earth’s age may never be accurately determined. But we continue to search for clues, study our findings but are never satisfied with any result. We console ourselves as we suffer from not knowing the secrets.

“There rolls the deep where grew a tree, O Earth what changes hast thou seen! There where the long street roars hath been, The stillness of the central sea.” -Tennyson

“What seest thou else In the dark backward and abysm of time?”
-Shakespeare’s The Tempest Act 1 Sceene 2

Welcome to Fluther! Here’s a hotdish to welcome my new neighbor.

I believe it’s about 6000 years old. But there aren’t many of us Creationists here. And, before I get into a discussion that I don’t have time for today, I’m going to step out of this discussion.

@ChocolateReigns

You know, creationists who refuse to even attempt to back up their claims are even more indefensible than those who do!

@ChocolateReigns My neighbor’s mother believed the earth was 4,000 years old. Do you all not believe in carbon dating?

@JLeslie

They would rather believe in ancient books written by long dead would-be philosophers than anything resembling modern empirical evidence.

@FutureMemory I just don’t get why they don’t go with a day doesn’t equal one of our days as we define it in modern times, and be able to believe the bible and not have to ignore science? I know many people go with that explanation; makes more sense to me.

@JLeslie Carbon dating doesn’t work for calculating the Earth’s age. The degradation of uraninite (a complex of uranium oxide, (or ellesworthite) is one of the scientifically accepted methods. As aoon as the uraninite crystal forms, it very very slowly starts breaking down at a uniform rate of disintegration in which lead is measured and equated to time.

@gondwanalon I’m a little worried that you can’t sense the sarcasm in my surprisingly accurate answert.

@Mamradpivo…...I would have caught it if you would had given the month, day and exact time of creation. Sorry.

For all we know the universe could be a computer simulation that was started just a few minutes ago.

Oh… I’m so disgusted at my search results on this topic, I can’t even bring myself to answer. I hate it when I realise there are too many loonies with their crap on the internet.

There are proper websites to read if you’re actually wanting to know, scientific facts about the make up of the earth and not perpetuate myths and untruths.
http://geology.com/
http://www.newscientist.com/topic/astrobiology

But perhaps your purpose of asking this question is more along the lines of ‘fishing’ and not fact finding.

If you’re trying to get a feel for the site, our members definitely tend towards the scientific side of things in general, and the liberal side of things in politics. All are welcome, though!

@gondwanalon Interesting. Thank you. But, does carbon dating date the fossils we find? Can that show more than a few thousand years?

THANKS TO ALL WHO HAVE WELCOMED ME!

@gondwanalon

“Carbon dating doesn’t work for calculating the Earth’s age.”

Absolutely correct, which is why it’s not used to date the Earth. Carbon 14 dating is accurate for periods up to about 60,000 years.

“The degradation of uraninite (a complex of uranium oxide, (or ellesworthite) is one of the scientifically accepted methods. As aoon as the uraninite crystal forms, it very very slowly starts breaking down at a uniform rate of disintegration in which lead is measured and equated to time.”

Here’s a good explanation of this process, why it’s accurate, and how it has its own error correction.

I thought it was important to clarify this because many creationists harp on radiocarbon dating without having the vaguest idea of what they are talking about- they actually think that C14 data is used to calculate the Earth’s age! Just wanted to make it clear (as I think you were trying to do) that this is never done. There are many types of radioactive dating; all with their own best uses and time frames.

@ragingloli I love your answer and I gave you lurve accordingly.

@crisw I wasn’t trying to show you or anyone why I believe in an intelligent creator. I was merely stating my opinion so that @DerangedSpaceMonkey could get his desired “feel for the site”.

@ChocolateReigns – @DerangedSpaceMonkey also asked for the source of the information.

I think the power of science here are several independent sources pointing to the same outcome. This includes our knowledge about the composition of the Sun, Moon, Mars and so forth. Or take the Japanese spacecraft that touched down on a space rock during a billion-mile mission successfully returned the first ever samples from the surface of an asteroid just recently. Lots of corroborating evidence. We are talking 4.5 billion year time frames here.

An intelligent creator can be seen as the author of our natural laws which led to an interesting universe with shining and exploding stars, complex molecules in space and at some point DNA and intelligent humans.

We intelligent human can see ourselves as the creation of this intelligent creator if we choose to do so. But we should make use of our intelligence and understand God’s creation properly.