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Solar System Date of Birth Determined
Invisible Pink Unicorn writes "UC Davis researchers have dated the earliest step in the formation of the solar system — when microscopic interstellar dust coalesced into mountain-sized chunks of rock — to 4,568 million years ago, within a range of about 2,080,000 years. In the second stage, mountain-sized masses grew quickly into about 20 Mars-sized planets and, in the third and final stage, these small planets smashed into each other in a series of giant collisions that left the planets we know today. The dates of these intermediary stages are well established. The article abstract is available from Astrophysical Journal Letters."
Nothing to see here. It is not like the radiometric dating methods are completely speculative and saddled with risky assumptions at all. These dates are solid! 4Ma + or - 2Ma... or maybe + or - 4Ma or 40 trillion years, it is not like we are guessing at all.
Everytime I read something like this I cannot help but wonder how they claim to have figured it out. To me it always sounds like they're just making up yet another wild number to keep the funds flowing.
...or something like that...
Scientist #1: crap, it's evaluation in a week
Scientist #2: so?
Scientist #1: well, the people who are giving us all our money will want to know what we made of it and we have nothing to present
Scientist #2: ah, well, let's just make up some wild number on how the universe is more or less exactly 4 billion years old...noone can really prove that wrong anyway...
Scientist #1: hmm, this might just work...
Scientist #2: and just to top it off we'll even admit we're wrong by a few million years...just so noone asks how we can be so sure
Scientist #1: My dear Scientist #2, you are a genious!