Valentine Pontifex

Here is something of interest for those interested in the age of the Earth:

<a href="http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2002/09/020906065136.htm" target="_blank">Livermore Lab Chemist Accurately Dates First Objects To Form In The Solar System</a>

RealityCheck

Does this support or rule out any current ideas on the formation of our solar system?

Starboy

Most probably yes and yes.

beausoleil

The research bears on the origin of short lived radionuclides in the early solar system.

For instance, it has been known for a long time that a number of 'short' half life radionuclides were alive - 26Al (.73 Ma) , 53Mn (3.7 Ma), 129I (16 Ma) for instance. The idea was that some of them were injected from a recent supernova. However, someone else found 10Be, which is not produced in stars and suggested that some of them could have been produced by energetic particles from the early sun breaking up nuclei. This would mean they were produced local to the objects they are found in, and their decay could not be used as a reliable chronometer across the solar system.

This research links the 26Al decay to that of two uranium isotopes to lead. Uranium cannot be made by spallation, the decay of 26 Al correlates with uranium, so the 26 Al was well mixed into the solar system and not recently produced near where these CAI (high temperature inclusions) formed.

Taken with other recent (last couple of years) research, we can use the uranium decay and short lived radionuclides to put together a timescale over which the solar system formed. It now looks like the time from earliest solid formation to differentiation (core formation) of the Earth was about 30 Ma.

Valentine Pontifex

Well the date the tests gave 4.57 billion years old for an age. That agrees with the current ideas, at least in general. Whether or not this is at odds with any current detailed hypothesises on the formation of the solar system is something that I really can't comment on.