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By the end of the nineteenth century, Lord Kelvin had completely demolished all opposition.<ref name="West"/> He made uniformitarian geological community to accept that the age of the earth must be finite and that estimating the age by quantitative reasoning instead of supporting steady-state theory with [[Horror of a Divine Foot|philosophical bias]] should be crucial part of the geological endeavor. Even ‘''Darwin’s bulldog''’ and [[T. H. Huxley|musketeer of Darwinism Huxley]], who previously attacked Kelvin by making indirect allusions about ''“the first passer-by who fancies that our house is not so well built as it might be”'', ventured to suggest, in front of the Geological society of London, that ''“limitation of the period during which living beings have inhabited this planet to one, two, or three hundred million years, may be admitted, without a complete revolution in geological speculation.”''<ref name="KelvinOnDynamics"/> Materialistic philosophers, such as the British analytical [[Bertrand Russell]], realized that the Hutton's materialstic concept ''”no vestige of a beginning, no prospect of an end”'' is further unmaintainable, and de facto denounced it while starting to proclaim Biblically compatible apocalyptic views: ''“all the labors of the ages, all the devotion, all the inspiration, all the noonday brightness of human genius, are destined to extinction in the vast death of Solar System”''. These things should be regarded, ''“if not quite beyond dispute,”'' ''“yet so nearly certain, that no philosophy which rejects them can hope to stand.”''<ref name="Signature">{{Cite book

By the end of the nineteenth century, Lord Kelvin had completely demolished all opposition.<ref name="West"/> He made uniformitarian geological community to accept that the age of the earth must be finite and that estimating the age by quantitative reasoning instead of supporting steady-state theory with [[Horror of a Divine Foot|philosophical bias]] should be crucial part of the geological endeavor. Even ‘''Darwin’s bulldog''’ and [[T. H. Huxley|musketeer of Darwinism Huxley]], who previously attacked Kelvin by making indirect allusions about ''“the first passer-by who fancies that our house is not so well built as it might be”'', ventured to suggest, in front of the Geological society of London, that ''“limitation of the period during which living beings have inhabited this planet to one, two, or three hundred million years, may be admitted, without a complete revolution in geological speculation.”''<ref name="KelvinOnDynamics"/> This was in direct contradiction with [[Darwin]] who previously declared that ''“a far longer period than 300 million years has elapsed”'' since the latter part of period for which he declared to have available ''“a clear evidence of the existence … of whole groups of beings."''{{#tag:ref|cf.[[Evolutionary schizophrenia]]|group=note}} Materialistic philosophers, such as the British analytical [[Bertrand Russell]], realized that the Hutton's materialstic concept ''”no vestige of a beginning, no prospect of an end”'' is further unmaintainable, and de facto denounced it while starting to proclaim Biblically compatible apocalyptic views: ''“all the labors of the ages, all the devotion, all the inspiration, all the noonday brightness of human genius, are destined to extinction in the vast death of Solar System”''. These things should be regarded, ''“if not quite beyond dispute,”'' ''“yet so nearly certain, that no philosophy which rejects them can hope to stand.”''<ref name="Signature">{{Cite book

| author = Meyer, Stephen C.

| author = Meyer, Stephen C.

| title = Signature in the Cell

| title = Signature in the Cell

| url=http://books.google.com/books?id=RUGKBdKawDUC| quote= }}</ref>  

| url=http://books.google.com/books?id=RUGKBdKawDUC| quote= }}</ref>  

But T.C. Chamberlin, head of the Department of Geology at the [[University of Chicago]], was not prepared to concede defeat. While defending his faith in long-ages, he speculated, without any observational basis whatever, that there might yet be discovered new sources of energy that would allow more time than Kelvin had calculated.<ref>{{cite book |title=Earth |author= Frank Press, Raymond Siever |publisher=W. H. Freeman |edition=4 |year=1986 |pages=40 |isbn=978-0716717430 |url=http://www.amazon.co.uk/Earth-Frank-Press/dp/0716717433}}</ref> Thus, the quest for the age of the earth as a subjective, arbitrary and erratic pursuit, was set for an fascinating turn.<ref name="West"/> This came in 1896, when [[radioactivity]] was discovered by Henri Becquerel and when in 1903 [[Marie and Pierre Curie|Pierre Curie]] and Albert Laborde demonstrated that [[radioactive decay]] releases heat. Before long, several people argued that this source of heat was great enough to overturn Kelvin’s conclusion about the boundary for the age of the earth. Among them was [[Ernest Rutherford]], who in 1904 suggested, in the Royal Institution, that ''“Lord Kelvin had limited the Age of the Earth, ‘provided no new source of heat was discovered.’ That prophetic utterance refers to what we are considering tonight, [[radium]]!”'' Later, Rutherford often repeated his tale of thinking on his feet in front of the “old bird” Kelvin who “beamed” at him. This episode and pleasing form of the anecdote, boosted by the eminence of its author, who was considered the father of nuclear theory, provided a ready vehicle for mythmaking and uncritical acceptance of proposition that because the discovery of radioactive heat undermined an assumption behind Kelvin’s calculation, it also undermined his conclusion.<ref name="PerryKelvinCritique"/> As the half-life of radium's dominant isotope is 1600 yr, heat given out by radium obviously could not be the wanted missing energy.{{#tag:ref|cf. ''"[Rutherford and Soddy] could not get away from the fact, however, that radium itself, although universally regarded as an element, decays far too rapidly to be as old as the minerals in which it is found. The only solution seemed to be that radium too must be a metabolon with a 'life' of a few thousand years."''<ref name ="BURCHFIELD">{{cite book |title=Lord Kelvin and the Age of the Earth |author=Joe D. Burchfield |publisher= The University of Chicago Press |place=Chicago |year=1975, 1990 |pages=173 |isbn=0-226-08043-9}}</ref>|group=note}} Nevertheless, later assumptions of equilibrium in decay series of [[uranium]] and [[thorium]] allowed to consider heat sources with half-lives in gigayears (Ga; 1 Ga = 10⁹ years).

But T.C. Chamberlin, head of the Department of Geology at the [[University of Chicago]], was not prepared to concede defeat. While defending his faith in long-ages, he speculated, without any observational basis whatever, that there might yet be discovered new sources of energy that would allow more time than Kelvin had calculated.<ref>{{cite book |title=Earth |author= Frank Press, Raymond Siever |publisher=W. H. Freeman |edition=4 |year=1986 |pages=40 |isbn=978-0716717430 |url=http://www.amazon.co.uk/Earth-Frank-Press/dp/0716717433}}</ref> Thus, the quest for the age of the earth as a subjective, arbitrary and erratic pursuit, was set for an fascinating turn.<ref name="West"/> This came in 1896, when [[radioactivity]] was discovered by Henri Becquerel and when in 1903 [[Marie and Pierre Curie|Pierre Curie]] and Albert Laborde demonstrated that [[radioactive decay]] releases heat. Before long, several people argued that this source of heat was great enough to overturn Kelvin’s conclusion about the boundary for the age of the earth. The situation resembled the one in the  previous two centuries when ''“those who sought to extend biblical time hardly knew where to begin, how to proceed, and what to conclude.”''<ref name="Rappaport1997"/> Among the followers of this effort was [[Ernest Rutherford]], who in 1904 suggested, in the Royal Institution, that ''“Lord Kelvin had limited the Age of the Earth, ‘provided no new source of heat was discovered.’ That prophetic utterance refers to what we are considering tonight, [[radium]]!”'' Later, Rutherford often repeated his tale of thinking on his feet in front of the “old bird” Kelvin who “beamed” at him. This episode and pleasing form of the anecdote, boosted by the eminence of its author, who was considered the father of the nuclear theory, provided a ready vehicle for mythmaking and uncritical acceptance of proposition that because the discovery of radioactive heat undermined an assumption behind Kelvin’s calculation, it also undermined his conclusion.<ref name="PerryKelvinCritique"/> As the half-life of radium's dominant isotope is 1600 yr, heat given out by radium obviously could not be the wanted missing energy.{{#tag:ref|cf. ''"[Rutherford and Soddy] could not get away from the fact, however, that radium itself, although universally regarded as an element, decays far too rapidly to be as old as the minerals in which it is found. The only solution seemed to be that radium too must be a metabolon with a 'life' of a few thousand years."''<ref name ="BURCHFIELD">{{cite book |title=Lord Kelvin and the Age of the Earth |author=Joe D. Burchfield |publisher= The University of Chicago Press |place=Chicago |year=1975, 1990 |pages=173 |isbn=0-226-08043-9}}</ref>|group=note}} Nevertheless, later assumptions of equilibrium in decay series of [[uranium]] and [[thorium]] allowed to consider heat sources with half-lives in gigayears (Ga; 1 Ga = 10⁹ years).

The 1911 edition of the [[Encyclopedia Britannica]] discussed dates up to 500 million years.<ref>Encyclopædia Britannica, pp 650-651.</ref>

The 1911 edition of the [[Encyclopedia Britannica]] discussed dates up to 500 million years.<ref>Encyclopædia Britannica, pp 650-651.</ref>