Estimate of The Earth's Age
Harrison Brown of the University of Chicago developed a new method for counting lead isotopes in igneous rocks, and assigned it to Clair Cameron Patterson as a dissertation project in 1948. During this period he operated under the assumption that meteorites are left-over materials from the creation of the Solar System, and thus by measuring the age of one of these rocks the age of the Earth would be revealed. Gathering the materials required time, and in 1953, Clair Cameron Patterson had his final specimens from the Canyon Diablo meteorite. He took them to the Argonne National Laboratory, where he was granted time on a late model mass spectrometer.
In a meeting in Wisconsin soon afterward, Patterson revealed the results of his study. The definitive age of the Earth is 4.550 billion years (give or take 70 million years). This number still stands although the margin of error is now down to about 20 million years.
Read more about this topic: Clair Cameron Patterson
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