this post was submitted on 24 Oct 2024
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Science Memes

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Eat lead (mander.xyz)
submitted 1 month ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]
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[–] [email protected] 14 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago)

I mean, the existence of lead doesn't necessarily prove the age of the earth so much as that those elements have existed for that long.

HOWEVER -- you're basically guaranteed to find lead in uranium deposits found around the earth, and the ratio of lead/uranium is how we calculated the 4.6 billion years.

Uranium is formed in Neutron stars or Supernova, so at the very least - the uranium found on earth itself is 4.6 billion years old. Whether "Earth" was "Earth" back then, who knows. This could be pre-moon? Could be before the earth even cooled down to have a solid outer layer? So the estimate is bound to be off by a little...

Just not by 4.5 billion years.

I'm pretty sure just soap has been around for more than 4.5k years and that means civilization too. So even if you do some backflips in justification here, there's no way you get 4k.