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| In Our Time
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| | | The big ideas which form the intellectual agenda of our age are illuminated by some of the best minds. Melvyn Bragg and three guests investigate the history of ideas and debate their application in modern life. | | | | | LISTEN AGAIN | | | |
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| | | | | "I'm fascinated by the fact that we live in a time when so many people are doing fantastic work, and thinking in areas which it's not remotely possible for me to keep up with & and these people are prepared to talk about it. They're prepared to come on In Our Time and other programmes on Radio 4 and try and talk to the rest of us ..." |
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|  | | AGEING THE EARTH
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It was once thought that the world began in 4004 BC. Lord Kelvin calculated the cooling temperature of a rock the size of our planet and came up with a figure of 20 million years for the age of the Earth. Now, the history of our planet is divided into four great Eons: the Hadean, the Archaen, the Proterozoic and the Phanerozoic. Together, they are taken to encompass an incredible four and a half billion years.
How can we begin to make sense of such a huge swathe of time? And can we be sure that we have got the Earth’s age right? Geologists use Eras, Periods and Epochs to further punctuate what’s known as ‘Deep Time’, but can we be sure that the classifications we use don’t obscure more than they reveal?
Contributors
Richard Corfield, Research Associate in the Department of Earth Sciences at Oxford University
Hazel Rymer, Senior Lecturer in the Department of Earth Sciences at the Open University
Henry Gee, Senior Editor at Nature
Further reading
Architects of Eternity: The New Science of Fossils by Richard Corfield (Review, 2002)
The Silent Landscape by Richard Corfield (Joseph Henry Press, 2003)
Deep Time: Cladistics, the Revolution in Evolution by Henry Gee (Fourth Estate, 2001)
The Crucible of Creation by Simon Conway Morris (Oxford Paperbacks, 1999)
Wonderful Life by Stephen Jay Gould (Vintage, 2000)
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