In the nineteenth century, prominent scientists such as Charles Lyell, Charles Darwin, Sir William Thomson (Lord Kelvin), and Thomas Huxley, were in continual debate about the age of the earth. The discovery of the radioactive properties of uranium in 1896 by Henri Becquerel subsequently revolutionized the way scientists measured the age of artifacts and supported the theory that the earth was considerably older than what some scientists believed.

There are several methods of determining the actual or relative age of the earth's crust: examination of fossil remains of plants and animals, relating the magnetic field of ancient days to the current magnetic field of the earth, and examination of artifacts from past civilizations. However, one of the most widely used and accepted method is radioactive dating. All radioactive dating is based on the fact that a radioactive substance, through its characteristic disintegration, eventually transmutes into a stable...