Name: sasabbie21 Course: Integrated Science with Lab Topic: What are some modern techniques being used to determine the age of the earth? When it come to the earth, whether it be about its life, time created or life span you can assure there will be many different theories and beliefs. In this paper I will attempt to explain the defined theories that exist which explain the age of the earth.
Many scientists believes that the earth has a life span it is aging and it will eventually die, while on the other hand religion believes that the earth was created by God or a higher power and that the only one who can destroy it is God and no matter what we as humans do we cannot destroy it. When it comes to the earth and its creation and its life there are two sides to its story the religious side and the scientific side. To determine the age of the earth by scientific research you would resort to the school of geology which is the study of earth including its composition, structure, physical properties and history.
And on the religious (for the purpose of this paper I will use Christianity as the religion of choice) side you would need to refer to the Bible more specifically the book of Genesis and the book of Mathew and the book of Revelations. The big bang theory is a cosmological theory holding that the universe originated approximately 20 billion years ago from the violent explosion of a very small agglomeration of matter of extremely high density and temperature. This to me suggest that something existed before the universe because you cannot get something from nothing.
The authors of the book “ A Brief History of Time” Hawkins S. W states that since we only know what happens after the big bang we cannot include prior events in our theory of the earth, so we should accept the big gang theory as the beginning of time. (Hawkins, Mlodinow, Leonard, 2005). It seems that when it comes to what techniques are used to determine the age of the earth scientists tends to use quantum theory, Stephen Hawkins in one of his lecture explains how quantum theory is used to determine the beginning of the universe.
He states that “ It seems that Quantum theory, on the other hand, can predict how the universe will begin. Quantum theory introduces a new idea, that of imaginary time. Imaginary time may sound like science fiction, and it has been brought into Doctor Who. But nevertheless, it is a genuine scientific concept. One can picture it in the following way. One can think of ordinary, real, time as a horizontal line. On the left, one has the past, and on the right, the future. But there’s another kind of time in the vertical direction.
This is called imaginary time, because it is not the kind of time we normally experience. But in a sense, it is just as real, as what we call real time”. (Hawkins, 2005) Religious followers believes that the earth was created around 1410-1450 B. C the time when the book of Genesis was written by Moses. The very first chapter of the book talks about the creation of the earth, Genesis chapter 1: 1 “ In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth” (Bible Society, 2004).
This among other scriptures in the Bible is what religious people believe in and as far as new technology to determine when the age of the earth they still use the teachings of the Bible but from a different book. The book of Genesis speaks of the creation of the earth but the book that speaks of the end of the earth is the book of Revelations. The book of revelations speaks of how and when the world/earth will end, but the exact way in which it will end is made clear in this book; however, the goal of this paper is not to determine how the earth will end but when.
Christians believes that the earth will end or die along with all of us when God decides its time, which means this can happen any given day. This means that Christians does not believe that the earth will end in an exact determined number of billion years from now. While on the other hand, scientist’s uses technology and theoretical studies to determine the age of the earth and with human interference with global warming and natural and manmade disaster they have managed to come up with a theory which proves that the earth is aging just like us and over time the earth will eventually die along with the sun, moon and the stars.
As far as new techniques are concerned for religion there is none, religions have remain unchanged from the time they were created and followers follow the same teachings from generation to generation, the only thing that changes is their interpretations and with these different interpretations come denominations and even with this the main belief remains the same.
God created the Heaven and the earth and God will return and destroy the earth, and no man shall know the day or the hour when he shall return. “ Heaven and Earth shall pass away, but my words shall not pass away”. (Mathew 24: 35) In conclusion everything we know about the beginning of time and the life of the earth are all theories, what we need to do is have faith that the earth and all the elements in the universe will remain forever or at least for many generations to come.
And this applies to both scientists and religious believers; if scientists are right and the earth will end in some billion years from now then we need to make the most of it, and not do anything to speed up the process, on the other hand if religious followers are right (which I believe) then we all need to have faith and pray to God to keep seeing the good in us and spare us from damnation and prolong his impending return. The Big Bang. png Bibliography Hawkings, Mlodinow, Leonard, S. (2005).
Briefer history of time. Westminster, MD, USA : Alfred A. Knopf Incorporated Retrieved from http://site. ebrary. com. cwplib. proxy. liu. edu/lib/liu/docDetail. action? docID= 10126208 Bible Society, A. (2004). The holy bible. (p. 1). New York, NY USA: American Bible Society. Hawkins, S. (n. d. ). The origin of the universe. (2005). Retrieved from http://www. hawking. org. uk/the-origin-of-the-universe. html Bible Society, A. (2004). The holy bible. (p. 777). New York, NY USA: American Bible Society.