One of the driving factors behind efforts to determine this age was the introduction of (and controversy surrounding) evolutionary theory. Evolution required vast amounts of time for species to gradually form, die off, or transform one into another. The incredible variety of life found in the fossil record simply could not occur in an Earth of only a few million, or even a few tens of millions of years old. If Earth could be shown to be old, but "only" a few million years old, evolution might yet be shown false, and man might retain a special place in creation.
The single most influential estimate of Earth's age was put forth by Lord Kelvin, William Thomson (1824-1907), the preeminent physicist of his day. Kelvin's estimates were all based to some extent on the amount of time it would take Earth to cool from an initially molten state to its current temperature. They ranged from a few tens of millions of years to nearly half a billion years. Because of Kelvin's prestige, few dared to challenge his calculations or the premise upon which they were based, even when it became apparent that Earth was, instead, much older.
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