Customer Reviews

Ancient Earth, Ancient Skies: The Age of Earth and its Cosmic Surroundings

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This book is a shorter, thoroughly revised update of his earlier book, The Age of the Earth, which has received a number of excellent reviews. It has a somewhat different focus, and is, I think the better for it -- although the earlier book has more technical details that the reader may find interesting. To a person who is relatively new to the area, I would suggest reading this first.

Ch. 4, "How Radiometric Dating Works" is excellent and readable. It explains how rock dating is done using multiple overlapping techniques. It describes the problem of intial contamination by daughter products, and what is done to address it. I appreciate this detail because the author anticipates the questions that an intelligent reader might ask. I find his answers well thought out.

The remainder of the book shows how these techniques apply to the dating of "Earth's Most Ancient Rocks" (Ch. 5), "Moon Rocks" (Ch. 6), "Meteorites" (Ch. 7), and to the "Formation History of Earth and Meteorites" (Ch. 9) and "Age of the Universe" (Ch. 10).

In my mind one of the most impressive applications of these dating methods is described in J. William Schopf Life's Origin: The Beginnings of Biological Evolution, in which the role of zircon crystals in lava flows is described. I found the immediacy of Schopf's treatment quite interesting, and would recommend his book as an excellent companion.

This is an update to his earlier text book on The Age of the Earth published in 1991 and 474 pages. This book is shorter at 264 pages and a less technical synopsis of the main methods used to determine the age of the earth. It includes the age of the moon, meteorites, solar system and the age of the universe. There is a section on the nucleosynthesis of heavy elements in stars and supernovae. In short, this book is superb. Chapter headings are:

1. Sleuthing the Past
2. The Birth of the Universe, the Galaxy, the Solar System, and Earth
3. Early attempts.
4. Clocks in Rocks: How radiometric dating works.
5. Earth's most ancient rocks.
6. Moon Rocks: Samples from our nearest neighbor.
7. Meteorites: Ancient wanderers of the Solar System.
8. Lead isotopes: Hourglass of the Solar System.
9. The formation history of Earth and Meteorites: Sorting out the details.
10. The ages of the Universe, the Galaxy, and the Elements.
11. Summing up and looking ahead.

Plus. Recommended reading, references, glossary, and index.