The Age of the Earth and the Solar System. Absolute and Relative Ages

First of all, let us note that for scientists, the very formulation of the question of the age of the Earth was once very revolutionary - for "age" implies the presence of a "date of birth". Of course, in any of the religions, the corresponding deity creates the Earth with the creatures inhabiting it from the primordial Chaos, however, European science inherited from the ancient materialist philosophers a fundamentally different vision of the World. For her, the Earth has always been an integral part of the very Universe, which is "one, infinite and motionless . It is not born or destroyed . It cannot decrease and increase" (Giordano Bruno). But at the end of the Middle Ages, astronomers discover the existence of the so-called new stars: it turns out that heaven is not absolutely unchanged, as it was believed from time immemorial! Consequently, in principle, the most decisive (from the point of view of Humanity) of all possible changes are possible: the beginning and end of the existence of the Earth and the visible part of the Universe. And if so, then can we try to establish when this beginning was and what this end will be - without resorting to the help of mythology (six days of creation, Twilight of the gods, etc.)?

It should be noted that people were initially interested not in the age of the Earth as a celestial body, namely habitable earth- as they would say now, the biosphere. However, it is clear that by determining the time of the emergence of life, we thereby obtain the minimum life of the planet itself. And since the energy of the Sun was quite rightly believed to be the source of life on Earth, the age of our star, in turn, will give us the maximum life of the biosphere.

Establishing the time of the existence of the Sun - after the laws of conservation of matter and energy were discovered - seemed to physicists a rather simple task. The sun constantly radiates energy into space, nothing comes back, so, in theory, the amount of energy in the solar system should constantly decrease. The most energetically advantageous process (of those known before the XX century) is the burning of coal; heat and light are created as a result of the chemical reaction C + O2 ÞCO2 + Q. And since we know both the value of Q, and the amount of energy emitted by the Sun per unit of time, and the mass of the Sun (it was approximately calculated back in the 17th century), it is possible to calculate the total lifetime of a coal fire of this size in literally one action. It was then that it became clear that it should burn to the ground in just one and a half thousand years. Of course, there are substances that are more energy-intensive than coal, but this does not solve the problem: the estimated lifetime of the Sun is still less than six thousand years - that is, less time of existence of human civilization; it is clear that this is absurd.

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