Scientists Refine Earth's Clock

[Still Waters]

New research has revealed that some events in Earth's history happened more recently than previously thought. Scientists from the British Geological Survey and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, publishing recently in the journal Science, have refined the data used to determine how much time has passed since a mineral or rock was formed.

They report uranium isotopic composition of minerals, used to date major geological events, which are more accurate than previously published. The major effect of this is to reduce previous age determinations by up to 700,000 years.

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[Arbenol]

You should repost this in the 'Religion' sections. Creationists are going to have a field day with this.

I think issues like this are a timely reminder that science does not work in 'facts', but is always subject to revision. Brought to mind what a christian colleague of mine said to me last week: "I don't trust scientists. They're always changing their minds".

[Doc Socks Junior]

One of the most cool things about this research is the ability to better pinpoint absolute age dating. Most extinctions, in terms of relative age dates, happen very suddenly. However, when looked at with absolute age dating, we can see that extinctions are a (relatively) gradual event. Gradual at least in our terms of time, not in terms of geologic time.