EDIT: Adding more detailed pictures upon request in the comments.
If, for example, I want to read what Thomas Burnett believed, I download a copy of Telluris Theoria Sacra and I can read for myself that he accepted the reality of Noah's flood. The same is true of St Augustine's beliefs as there are several online translations of City of God Against the Pagans.
But Newton and Kepler?
Zilch. Sweet F.A. Absolutely nothing.
Even when a website references a text, either I can't find the text, or there is no age-of-the-earth calculation in the text that I can find.
So, did either Newton or Kepler calculate the age of the earth, or is this just an urban myth? If it's true, does anyone have references that I can look at for myself. These will have to be secondary references (English translations) as I expect the actual primary reference to be in Latin, and sadly, I only read English.
So I actually want to confirm that this is the case. Maybe there are other famous theories saying it is 3 billion years old or 6, therefore my question.
Since mercury is so dense (about 13.5 g/cm3) that many metals will float in it, but I'm having a hard time imagining how to make a barometer using his principle, and how a scale (Vernier or otherwise) is used to read the height of an object floating in mercury in order to determine barometric pressure.
One thing I'd like to bring is a fairly grounded explanation for the creation of the planet and the universe, as understood by scientists in the fictional setting.
What did we know about these topics back in the 50's? How did we used to believe the planet were formed?
As a follow up question, if text books like the one from 1979 are too far out of date, how old can I generally go to get an accurate text?
In this context, I remember once being told that some large proportion (tens of per cent) of palaeomagnetic directions determined during the early days of the field had subsequently been invalidated when sites and samples were re-analysed using modern methodologies. Occasionally I come across an individual study which explicitly invalidates an earlier one; for example, Turner et al. (1989) revised the findings of Kennett and Watkins (1974), citing ‘serious errors in the interpretation of the results’.
I've never come across a published study which attempts a quantitative survey of how often such invalidations occur. Does anyone know of any publications which provide such a review of early palaeomagnetic studies and their reproducibility -- or lack thereof?
Doell, R. R. and Cox, A. (1967). Analysis of palaeomagnetic data. In Collinson, D. W., Creer, K. M. and Runcorn, S. K., editors, Methods in Palaeomagnetism, number 3 in Developments in Solid Earth Geophysics, pages 340–346. Amsterdam: Elsevier.
Kennett, J. P., & Watkins, N. D. (1974). Late Miocene—Early Pliocene paleomagnetic stratigraphy, paleoclimatology, and biostratigraphy in New Zealand. Geological Society of America Bulletin, 85(9), 1385-1398.
Kent, J. T., Briden, J. C., & Mardia, K. V. (1983). Linear and planar structure in ordered multivariate data as applied to progressive demagnetization of palaeomagnetic remanence. Geophysical Journal International, 75(3), 593-621.
Kirschvink, J. L. (1980). The least-squares line and plane and the analysis of palaeomagnetic data. Geophysical Journal International, 62(3), 699-718.
McFadden, P. L., & McElhinny, M. W. (1988). The combined analysis of remagnetization circles and direct observations in palaeomagnetism. Earth and Planetary Science Letters, 87(1), 161-172.
Turner, G. M., Roberts, A. P., Laj, C., Kissel, C., Mazaud, A., Guitton, S., & Christoffel, D. A. (1989). New paleomagnetic results from Blind River: Revised magnetostratigraphy and tectonic rotation of the Marlborough region, South Island, New Zealand. New Zealand journal of geology and geophysics, 32(2), 191-196.
Of course, if they go on to work with chemists in, say, an environmental geology practice, this causes no small amount of contention and sometimes confusion between the geo and the chemist, who, of course, understands the terms "acidic", etc. in the classic chemical sense, of $pH = -log [H^+]$, etc.
How did the terms "acidic" and "basic" come to be associated with %$SiO_2$ in igneous rocks, in contrast to the classical chemical definition?
Note to Responders: Apologies for my ignorance. It's been over 30 years since I studied and worked in (exploration) geology. So my knowledge of current terminology is a little rusty, especially since my major experience has been that of an geologist transmogrified into an electronic engineer.
For they do not realize that the water cannot be even seven times greater and still leave any part of the land dry, unless earth as a whole vacated the center of gravity and yielded that position to water, as if the latter were heavier than itself For, spheres are to each other as the cubes of their diameters. Therefore, if Earth were the eighth part to seven parts of water, earth's diameter could not be greater than the distance from [their joint] center to the circumference of the waters.
For context, "they" is referring to Aristotelians which according to Copernicus, believe that there is ten times more water than land.
My main lack of understanding comes from how Copernicus uses the statement "spheres are to each other as the cubes of their diameters." To prove that "if Earth were the eighth part to seven parts of water, earth's diameter could not be greater than the distance from [their joint] center to the circumference of the waters." Thereby showing that a 1:7 ratio of land to water is the threshold where water submerges the entire Earth.
Would his job, if it were repeated today, in the light of current knowledge, do lead to similar conclusions, or is it based on erroneous assumptions and therefore no longer valid?
Considering that
- the history of geology in general goes back at least 3 or 4 centuries
- the study of plate tectonics goes back to 1912 (even though it took a few more decades to gain wide acceptance)
- oceanic ridges were known at least as early as 1872
- the correlation between seismic activity and volcanoes has been known for some time (I don't know exactly how long, but certainly the Romans felt the ground shaking when Vesuvius' erupted)
Then my question is, with regards to the (seemingly unusually) recent date quoted in the above article:
Why did the discovery of volcanic activity at sub-oceanic plate boundaries take so long?