When this happens gasses dissolved in the magma are able to come out of solution, forming gas bubbles (the cavities) inside it. When the magma finally reaches the surface as lava and cools, the rock solidifies around the gas bubbles and traps them inside, preserving them as holes filled with gas called vesicles.
He took them to the Argonne National Laboratory, where he was granted time on a late-model mass spectrometer. In a meeting in Wisconsin soon afterward, Patterson revealed the results of his study. The definitive age of the Earth is 4.550 billion years (give or take 70 million years). The current estimate for the age of the earth is 4.54 Â± 0.05 billion years (4.54 Ã 109 years Â± 1%).
Hadean Eon [4500 Myr - 4000 Myr ] The age of the Earth is projected to be about 4500 Myr from radiometric dating of the oldest rocks and meteorites. There is evidence of a time of intense bombardment of the Earth in the time period from about 4100 to 3800 Myr in what is called the late heavy bombardment.