Nobel-winning Scientist: I Have No Idea If The Big Bang Happened!

a reply to: Soylent Green Is People

This.

originally posted by: LSU2018
a reply to: OrionHunterX

How can they determine the age of a star? We don't even know if the Earth is 4.5 billion years old.

By carbon dating the rocks in Earth's crust, as well as the rocks in Earth's neighbors, such as the moon and meteorites, scientists have calculated that Earth is 4.54 billion years old, with an error range of about 50 million years.

originally posted by: OrionHunterX

originally posted by: LSU2018
a reply to: OrionHunterX

How can they determine the age of a star? We don't even know if the Earth is 4.5 billion years old.

By carbon dating the rocks in Earth's crust, as well as the rocks in Earth's neighbors, such as the moon and meteorites, scientists have calculated that Earth is 4.54 billion years old, with an error range of about 50 million years.

Not quite, carbon-dating is used to determine the age of carbon-based remains over the last 60,000 years or so, using the 5730 year half-life of carbon-14. After 60,000 years there is so little carbon-14 left that it's not a good dating technique and certainly can't be used to date the Earth. Other types of radiometric dating can be used instead, for elements that have much longer half-lives than carbon-14, such as comparing ratios of two different isotopes of lead.

Unless the Universe stretches to a limit then snaps back into a singularity, in our life time then explodes and starts it's expansion again we will never know for sure.