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    How do scientists find out how old the Earth is? Learn interesting facts


    The question that often comes to our mind is that of the earth? How old is it and how do scientists know how old the earth is? According to scientists, the world is actually like a big clock and all we need to know is how to read this clock. To estimate the age of the earth, we need to think about what the world is made of. 

    The world, and everything in it, is actually made up of a very small thing called an "element". These are tiny building blocks of everything. You may have heard the names of some elements before, for example, gold is an element, and so is silver. As far as we know, there are about 118 different elements on Earth. Most of these elements do not change and remain in their original state forever. 

    Scientists call these elements "stable elements". But there is another type of element that changes over time into something else. They are not so common, but they are in everything. These are called "unstable" or "radioactive" elements. Imagine that some part of you is actually turning into something else! But don't worry, most of these changes are long overdue. Some teeth actually take billions of years to make any serious change. For instance, your teeth contain a component called potassium, which is one of these evolving components. Nearly everything, including your TV, PC, garden soil, has a portion of these evolving components. 

    This process of transformation is called "radioactive decay". Similarly, rocks also contain these volatile elements, and scientists have estimated how long it takes for one of these elements to transform into another. For example, if we have something that has an unstable element called 14C (simply "carbon 14"), we know that half of all the 14C in our sample is made up of another element. It takes approximately 5,730 years for 14N (called "Nitrogen 14") to change. What is the age? How to measure the age of the Earth? Scientists first measure how many unstable elements are left in the rocks of the Earth (these are the elements that have not yet changed into another element but will change over time). Because we know they are unstable.) Scientists then measure the amount of the element in which they change. 

    Once scientists know this, Also know how long this change takes, so they can find out how old the world is. So how old is the earth? Scientists have calculated that the age of the world is about 4,600,000,000 years or 4.6 Billion years.

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