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For most of history, people trusted mythology or religion to provide an answer to the pressing question of the earth's age, even though nature abounds with clues. In "A Natural History of Time", geophysicist Pascal Richet tells the fascinating story of how scientists and philosophers examined those clues and from them built a chronological scale that has made it possible to reconstruct the history of nature itself. The quest for time is a story of ingenuity and determination, and like a geologist, Pascal Richet carefully peels back the strata of that history, giving us a chance to marvel at each layer and truly appreciate how far our knowledge - and our planet - have come.
E-Book Content
A Natural History of Time
A Natural History of Time
PASCAL RICHET TRANSLATED BY JOHN VENERELLA
The University of Chicago Press
Chicago and London
Originally published as L’ˆage du monde: A` la d´ecouverte de l’immensit´e du ´ temps. © Editions du Seuil, 1999. The University of Chicago Press, Chicago 60637 The University of Chicago Press, Ltd., London © 2007 by The University of Chicago All rights reserved. Published 2007 Paperback edition 2010 Printed in the United States of America 19 18 17 16 15 14 13 12 11 10
2 3 4 5 6
ISBN-13: 978-0-226-71287-1 (cloth) ISBN-13: 978-0-226-71288-8 (paper) ISBN-10: 0-226-71287-7 (cloth) ISBN-10: 0-226-71288-5 (paper) Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Richet, Pascal. [Age du monde. English.] A natural history of time / Pascal Richet; translated by John Venerella. p.
cm.
Includes bibliographic references and index. ISBN-13: 978-0-226-71287-1(cloth: alk. paper) ISBN-10: 0-226-71287-7 (cloth: alk. paper) 2. Earth—Age.
1. Geological time.
I. Title.
QE508.R5414 2007 551.7 01—dc22 2006033992 ∞ The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements
of the American National Standard for Information Sciences— Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI Z39.48-1992.
In order to determine the time at which the planets were formed and to calculate the cooling of the terrestrial globe, he engaged the services of four or five lovely, sweetly complexioned ladies; he had several globes of all sorts of materials and of all sorts of densities heated to red-hot, and these they held by turns in their delicate hands, reporting to him the degrees of the heat and the periods of cooling; and upon this fragile basis, he erected the most audacious of edifices. C H E V A L I E R D ’ A U D E , V I E P R I V E´ E D U C O M T E D E B U F F O N
Contents Preface ix 1
Time without a Beginning? 1
2
On the Great Book of Moses 24
3
Genesis as Viewed through the Prism of Natural Philosophy 54
4
Nature’s Admirable Medals 85
5
The March of the Comets 114
6
Heroic Age, Relative Time 143
7
The Long History of Two Barons 176
8
The Elasticity of Time 206
9
The Pandora’s Box of Physics 237
10
The Sun, the Earth, Radioactivity—and Kelvin’s Death 264
11
The Long Quest of Arthur Holmes 288
12
From the Atomic Bomb to the Age of the Earth 320 Epilogue 350 Appendix: Mathematical Complements 355 Source Notes 357
Suggestions for Further Reading and Reference 373
Bibliography 409
Index 455
Preface How has the study of nature—from ancient times to our current era—shaped our perceptions of time and of durations of time? According to the Judeo-Christian tradition, the Creation would date back only a few millennia, though the ancient Greeks commonly held that the world had been around for all eternity. Between these two extremes, any among the most various