World News Korner

Cosmos host Neil deGrasse Tyson gives Creationists a scientific beat down.

A little Neil deGrasse magic at the Grand Canyon.

Courtesy of the LA Times:

Many scholars over the centuries had pondered just how old our Earth might be, including an Irish archbishop named James Ussher. Ussher started with the Bible, specifically the account of the death of the Babylonian king Nebuchadnezzar II in the Second Book of Kings. By tracing the various biblical genealogies — what host Neil de Grasse Tyson calls “counting the begats” — he triumphantly declared that the Earth was born on October 22, 4004 BC, at 6 p.m. on a Saturday.

That is certainly specific; it is also spectacularly wrong. One is reminded of Galileo’s observation about the dangers of using the Bible as a guide to scientific questions. Loosely paraphrased: The Bible teaches us how to get to heaven; it is not a treatise on how the heavens move.

Later scholars turned to the book of nature to unlock secrets that would shed light on Earth's age, specifically the many layers of rock and sediment that represent various epochs in Earth’s geological history. Instead of counting the begats, scientists could count the layers. But even that method didn’t prove accurate enough.

A fragment of meteorite retrieved from Canyon Diablo held the answer. Such objects are relics from the formation of the solar system, including Earth, and they contain many different elements, notably uranium, a radioactive substance that over time decays into lead. In the 1940s, a physicist at the University of Chicago named Harrison Brown thought it might be possible to determine the age of the Earth by counting the lead isotopes in such a meteorite.

Brown tasked his protege, Clair Patterson, with the experiment to determine the age of the earth, and after overcoming numerous obstacles, he finally did.

The episode demonstrated with great detail the process by which Patterson reached the conclusion that the earth is 4.5 billion years old, and then compared it to the completely unscientific counting of "begats" performed by Archbishop Usher, using the Bible as his sole source of data.

This served to illustrate just how meticulous the scientific process had been, especially when compared to what was essentially uneducated guessing.

Interestingly enough his work with determining the age of the earth, revealed to Clair Patterson that there was an inordinate amount of lead in the environment. Which was a deadly toxin to human beings.

This realization ultimately led to him discovering that the most egregious source for this poison was the exhaust pipes of our very own automobiles.

Of course this led to conflict with the gas companies who brought in their own experts to discredit him, he lost his funding, and was the victim of character assassination for years. (Sound familiar?)

Ultimately, as we all know, the lead was removed from our gasoline, our paint, and many other products in order to protect the environment and protect us as well.

I felt that Cosmos did a great job of undermining the Creationist argument for a young planet, while providing evidence for how those with a vested interest in arguing against certain scientific findings are willing to spend vast amounts of money, and utilize political muscle, to change the narrative.

It was a very good, and very important, program. Which should inspire some fundamentalist backlash in 3..2..1

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