An average person's notion of the age of the Earth

[Mr Flibble]

I was recently at a quiz night, where we had to devse a quiz question that was not to hard, and not to easy, for the purposes of the quiz. So being a geology/geophysics major, I of course picked a question from y area of expertise, 'what is the age of the Earth?'.

To my surprise only one other person at my table was able to answer the question correctly, and she is also a geology major. The others ranged from 10 million years to 1 billion (which at least is the correct order of magnitude). Two of the answers given were less than the time of the death of the dinosaurs, I figured nearly everyone, certainly everyone in my family, should know that age. The person who stated 10 million years is no uneducated individual, but holds a B. Science, with honours in organic chemistry (at adelaide uni).

This observation has lead me to the following conclusions:

a) the average person has absolutely no idea how old the Earth is. They know it is old, but don't even have a clue about the order of magnitude.

b) this could be a reason why people are able to believe YEC rubbish. They have no idea how old the Earth is to begin ith, and have no idea how lon the process to get it in the condition it is now would take, and so are receptive to believing in a young Earth.

c) I really think that the age of the planet we are living on is something that should be taught in schools, more important than knowing the year of the battle of hastings (or maybe that is just my geo bias showing through)

On a side note: interestingly one of the people who got the closest (guessed ~1 billion) is the daughter of creationists, who refused to let her learn about evolution at school, and so was taught by her boyfriend at the time (my brother) in secret.

[Drunk Monkey]

That’s interesting, you’d think that there would be more enthuses on teaching that the Earth is 4.5 billion years old. Maybe there guess depends on how each person thinks.

[Zero]

I think I did actually learn of the age of the earth in school, but I've also been one to do a lot of reading, and it's just as likely I learned it on my own. I agree, the age of the earth is important, but really, even if it were taught in schools, how many kids would actually be attentive, and retain the knowledge? Although this lack of knowledge does make sense with why YECism would be as popular as it is.

[Kuroneko]

Large numbers are taught in the evolution curriculum; certainly enough to rule out anything lower than a billion, even if the exact age of the Earth might be hazy. They are simply not remembered. There may be many reasons for this, but I think the main problem is much more basic: complete and utter innumeracy. Disregarding the singular case of your BSci friend (whose qualifications are highly suspect), the average person qutie simply has no ability in mentally perceiving the difference between a million, a billion, and a trillion, and most don't even want to do so. That's a very dangerous attitude, in light of the of the fact that the ever-growing (US) national debt is measured in trillions.

[Noble Ire]

Hmm, a few days ago, in one of my classes (European History), for some reason we began to discuss the age of the universe. One of my classmates actually threw out 4 billion as the age of the universe, and I thought she would be throughly rebuffed by our teacher, or one of the other students in the room (its the highest level course in the grade) but instead, the teacher (one of the more intellegent people I know)accepted the number as being correct. I thought that kind of error was pretty suprising.

[Zero]

4 billion, 14 billion, what's the difference? Lol. Yeah, there should be more education in this area, but if it starts to happen, YECs will attempt to make it seem like the age is in dispute, and make tons of BS claims..

[The Spartan]

4 billion, 14 billion, what's the difference? Lol. Yeah, there should be more education in this area, but if it starts to happen, YECs will attempt to make it seem like the age is in dispute, and make tons of BS claims..

And YECs don't already do this? Including making bullshit claims about the Earth's age?

[lPeregrine]

I don't find it too surprising. I couldn't have guessed the exact number, I just don't use it often enough to remember. It's "a really big number to look up in a book". For non-geology people, it's not time to start worrying unless they start trying to claim some insanely low-end number and arguing back when presented with the truth. As long as they've got the general "really really old, not 5,000 years" idea right, I wouldn't consider it any different than a forgotten phone number.

[Darth Wong]

Still, when someone does not distinguish between millions and billions, you have a problem. I don't expect someone to necessarily rattle off "4.5 billion years" for the age of the Earth, but I do expect him to know that the number is in the billions rather than the millions. An error of several orders of magnitude is unacceptable. It would be like someone estimating the population of the USA at 300,000 people. You'd smack him in the head for something like that.

[Guy N. Cognito]

4.5 Billion? Crap, I have to get more candles for the cake. On a more serious note. How can a person with a major in Science not have the correct magnitude for the age of the Earth? I find it odd, but then again, I was always interested in that sort of thing, so I knew the age of Good old mother Earth.

[Darth Wong]

How can a person with a major in Science not have the correct magnitude for the age of the Earth?

Not all schools are the same; some schools turn out graduates with a lower-quality degree than others.

[Guy N. Cognito]

Hmmm.... I'm looking at the University of Adelaide, it's in Southern Australia. They even have a Bachelor of Science focusing on Evolutionary Biology. I think that rules out religion tainting the curriculum I guess either this person has never encoutered this infomation before or it just never stuck. Either way, wierd.

[NPComplete]

You know, I think that you might all be blowing this out of proportion a little bit because of your contact with YECs etc.

I've got a degree in science from the University of Toronto (i.e. not a cow college or online degree mill) and things like that weren't taught in any class I took (mostly because it's not applicable to a whole lot)

I don't think that there's a big problem with people not knowing something like that; the problem is with people trying to teach the incorrect figure. The average person has no need to know the age of the Earth.

You wouldn't be getting as pissed off about this if the question had been "How many stars are there in our galaxy?", or "How many trees are there on planet Earth right now?", which are equally non-essential pieces of knowledge for most people.

[Mr Flibble]

Hmmm.... I'm looking at the University of Adelaide, it's in Southern Australia. They even have a Bachelor of Science focusing on Evolutionary Biology. I think that rules out religion tainting the curriculum I guess either this person has never encoutered this infomation before or it just never stuck. Either way, wierd.

Wll the individual in question did get her degree a couple of decades ago, so her knowledge is dated. She also may not have taken any courses that related to the age of the Earth, its possible, though not likely, I was surprised by her answer though.

The university of Adelaide is decent is some areas (particularly denitistry and geology) I hate the chemistry/physics department with a passion though, they are quite insular.

[General Zod]

You know, I think that you might all be blowing this out of proportion a little bit because of your contact with YECs etc.

I've got a degree in science from the University of Toronto (i.e. not a cow college or online degree mill) and things like that weren't taught in any class I took (mostly because it's not applicable to a whole lot)

I don't think that there's a big problem with people not knowing something like that; the problem is with people trying to teach the incorrect figure. The average person has no need to know the age of the Earth.

You wouldn't be getting as pissed off about this if the question had been "How many stars are there in our galaxy?", or "How many trees are there on planet Earth right now?", which are equally non-essential pieces of knowledge for most people.

Did you bother reading the thread at all? Nobody's getting pissed because people don't know the exact age of the planet. People are getting pissed because dimwits are missing the ballpark figure by such a wide margin. It would be like someone saying there's only a few hundred stars in the sky even though there's billions of them. It tells of how poor their -general- science education was.

[NPComplete]

Did you bother reading the thread at all? Nobody's getting pissed because people don't know the exact age of the planet. People are getting pissed because dimwits are missing the ballpark figure by such a wide margin. It would be like someone saying there's only a few hundred stars in the sky even though there's billions of them. It tells of how poor their -general- science education was.

It seems that the bad analogies are out in force today. There are photos of galaxies that clearly show that there are more stars than hundreds in a galaxy, to say nothing of the exposure to that idea through sci-fi TV and movies. The United States is the most powerful country on the planet, so estimating it's population too low is inexcusable, especially because people should know the population of their own town/city/country and it's likely to put a figure like 300,000 into perspective.

My point is that not knowing even a ball-park figure for the age of the Earth is relatively unimportant and excuseable in the grand scheme of things. It's even more excusable in light of the fact that everything that most things from history that people hear about occur in a very short timeframe. It's only being held up as an example of gross ignorance because a) a geologist (someone who should know this figure) noticed it, and b) the anti-YEC crowd is assuming that to guess the age too low is an indicator of creationist leanings. Would the same controversy have been generated if all the guesses were an order of magnitude too high?

For that matter, if I'd posted the same story, but with me asking the value for the Universal Gravitational Constant in a bar, then being horrified at getting answers ranging from 9.8m/s to 6.67 x 10^-9 (two orders of magnitude too big!!!) would I have gotten the same response?

[General Zod]

My point is that not knowing even a ball-park figure for the age of the Earth is relatively unimportant and excuseable in the grand scheme of things. It's even more excusable in light of the fact that everything that most things from history that people hear about occur in a very short timeframe. It's only being held up as an example of gross ignorance because a) a geologist (someone who should know this figure) noticed it, and b) the anti-YEC crowd is assuming that to guess the age too low is an indicator of creationist leanings. Would the same controversy have been generated if all the guesses were an order of magnitude too high?

For that matter, if I'd posted the same story, but with me asking the value for the Universal Gravitational Constant in a bar, then being horrified at getting answers ranging from 9.8m/s to 6.67 x 10^-9 (two orders of magnitude too big!!!) would I have gotten the same response?

What was that about bad analogies? The Universal Gravitational Constant, when compared to things like "how old is the planet" or "when did the dinosaurs die" is relatively obscure. Most people, given a very basic science education (the age of the planet is 6th grade stuff here) should at the very least be able to get the billions of years ballpark figure, while pinpointing the time the dinosaurs died to a millions of years ago.

[NPComplete]

What was that about bad analogies? The Universal Gravitational Constant, when compared to things like "how old is the planet" or "when did the dinosaurs die" is relatively obscure. Most people, given a very basic science education (the age of the planet is 6th grade stuff here) should at the very least be able to get the billions of years ballpark figure, while pinpointing the time the dinosaurs died to a millions of years ago.

Obscurity isn't as important as day-to-day utility for a piece of knowledge. I'm sure we all learned a lot of stuff in grade school that we wouldn't remember now, and physical constants are just as useful as the age of the earth to the average person.

I'd be more concerned if someone couldn't correctly give the voltage of a wall socket, or identify how many miles you can drive before needing to change your tires.

Nobody is going to die if they don't know the age of the earth (or the Universal Gravitational constant). It doesn't matter, and neither is a good indicator of scientific knowledge. Not knowing how to figure out the data is more troublesome. Memorization of data is basically meaningless.

[NPComplete]

I should correct myself.

Memorization is important for things like voltage/milage in my example. A person doesn't need to understand electricity or the mechanisms of tire wear, just know the values so they buy the right appliances etc.

Memorization of a number is not a meaningful measure of someone's knowledge, however. Especially not when the internet's around.

[Admiral Valdemar]

I was always told in my course to round about to 4.5 billion (or 4500 MYA) and I don't recall anyone in any tests ever confusing such time periods, unless it was confusing like the different eras e.g. Cambrian, Jurassic etc.

That was, however, a class of BSc. majors in biology or biomedicine, so it's really common knowledge (or bloody should be). I can see how most Laymen would get the figure wrong, one just has to watch The Weakest Link to see some fracking awful answers to common questions in science. I'd expect though some basic comprehension, but as this thread states, even getting the number down to the right order of magnitude is a task for some. If you don't know it's 4.5 billion years, say billions. At least it's justified.

I fear this is just another part of a greater trend in the West where schooling is lacking in science at least and making up for it in diversity of subjects or simply turning students into efficient exam passing machines with no ingenuity or common sense to see that if the dinos died 65 MYA, the Earth can't be younger than that age.

Sad, but seemingly true, at least the schooling in America is seen to have this more obvious.

[CaptainChewbacca]

If someone in a bar told me the UGC was 6.67 *10^-9, I'd buy them a drink just for getting the significant figures!

As also being a geologist, I run into this stuff alot. There's a lot of "things I remember from school" that turn out to be wrong when I have to convince people those things they remembered were wrong. Another sticking point is "dark side of the moon" vs. "far side of the moon".

FYI:
Universe: 13-15 GA
Earth: 4.6 GA
Moon: 4 GA
Life on earth: 3.2 GA

[Sean Howard]

a) the average person has absolutely no idea how old the Earth is. They know it is old, but don't even have a clue about the order of magnitude.

I don't get this. How could you make it through high school, let alone college, without seeing a timeline of Earth's history? How could you not ever have watched Discovery channel, or ever read any article about dinosaurs?

If you have much of a brain at all, you should *accidentally* have picked up 4.5 billion years, or at least "billions of years".

Shit, I just read an article on Yahoo news the other day about a 4 billion year old crystal that they suspect is the oldest example of sedimentary rock ever found.

Even if you have 0 interest in science, how do these things escape you? I, for example, have <0 interest in Hollywood gossip. Yet, I am aware that Tom Cruise proposed to Katie Holmes on the Eiffel Tower recently. I learned that out of my fucking peripheral vision.

I guess it requires no interest in science, no interest in any sort of news, or any sort of television that isn't a sitcom, or in anything you were ever taught in school.

[Pint0 Xtreme]

Well, no one disputes the validity of Tom Cruise's proposal to to Katie Holmes. At least not in the manner and ferocity that the well-funded and influential fundies in the United States dispute any statements of science that contradicts their fucked up perspective of reality.

[Darth Wong]

My point is that not knowing even a ball-park figure for the age of the Earth is relatively unimportant and excuseable in the grand scheme of things.

Not if you have any knowledge of biology, and like it or not, evolution vs creation is a current political issue of some considerable import since it involves battles over our school systems. The fact is that a planetary age of only a few million years is utterly absurd if you have even halting knowledge of things like the age of the dinosaur era, not to mention the nature of evolutionary and geological timescales. Widespread ignorance of the age of the Earth may be a major contributing factor to the acceptance of creationism; after all, if you think the Earth is very young, then it is actually logical to doubt that evolution could have produced the existing biosystem.

[CaptainChewbacca]

If I could, I'd like to have gone back in time to watch the Darwin vs. Kelvan debate on the age of the earth. Kelvan was wrong, because he didn't know about radioactive decay.