• Question: How old is the earth?

    Asked by dude to Laura, Lily, Mark, Paul, Sarah on 22 Jun 2010 in Categories: . This question was also asked by mizzy.
    • Photo: Sarah Bardsley

      Sarah Bardsley answered on 22 Jun 2010:

      4.55 billion years. A number I can’t get my head around!

    • Photo: Mark Roberts

      Mark Roberts answered on 22 Jun 2010:

      Roughly 4.5 to 4.6 billion years old.

    • Photo: Lily Asquith

      Lily Asquith answered on 22 Jun 2010:

      4.5 billion years

    • Photo: Paul Roche

      Paul Roche answered on 22 Jun 2010:

      Based on the evidence that we have from meteorites (which are the left-overs from when our Solar system was created), we think Earth is about 4.55 billion years old (that’s 4,550,000,000 years). Meteorites allow us to look at what the raw materials that make stars and planets are like, but we can also get an idea of the age of the Solar system by looking at the radioactivity of these rocks.

      The Sun (which was created at the same time as the planets) will live to about 9-10 billion years, so it is about halfway through it’s life now.

    • Photo: Laura Maliszewski

      Laura Maliszewski answered on 22 Jun 2010:

      Billions of years, but I don’t know how many. Maybe someone else knows?

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