Age of the Earth research. Most geological samples from Earth are unable to give a direct date of the formation of Earth from the solar nebula because Earth has undergone differentiation into the core, mantle, and crust, and this has then undergone a long history of mixing and unmixing of these sample reservoirs by plate tectonics, weathering and hydrothermal circulation. All of these processes may adversely affect isotopic dating mechanisms because the sample cannot always be assumed to have remained as a closed system, by which it is meant that either the parent or daughter nuclide (a species of atom characterised by the number
Faith in the Earth all. The Earth represents our one and only window of opportunity, at the same time as it symbolizes all of our unknown higher potentials. Neither spaceman nor God will come to save us. But this is not a bleak dystopian materialism, because just as our simian ancestors couldn't realize that the development of their vocal cords (something they already had at least in rudimentary form) would open up those new dimensions of reality that we call language, civilization, and culture, just so we ourselves cannot yet get our minds around what we might be able to do already in rudimentary