BIOL 2051 Lecture Notes - Lecture 17: Thermoplasmatales, Clostridium, Ethanol Fermentation
Document Summary
James hutton: the church thought the earth was made october 16th in the afternoon, 6000 years ago. Hutton believed it had to be much older than that. He studied rock and knew what had to happen to make a large rock formation. Not hundreds, not thousands, but millions of years. Victorian scientist; thermodynamics expert; believed the earth was slowly cooling down. The fires of the planet interior suggested to him that the planet had once been completely molten. He reasoned the molten planet would need 20 million yrs to cool to present temperature. Unaware of a key source of heat inside the early earth, radioactivity. Tried to determine ago of earth based on rate of cooling. Determined age of earth based on thermodynamics only. A 21 yr old geology student; used radiation to revolutionize our understanding of earth history. By measuring the proportion of uranium to lead in crystals of rock, he could accurately determine their ages.
