Sir. W. Thomson and Geological Time

Abstract

YOUR correspondent G.H. will find in one of Thomson's papers something very like the assertion “that there was a time when the earth rotated too swiftly for the existence of life,” but expressed in a manner at once more precise and less pleonastic. “The existence of life” reminds me of a phrase which I heard a few days ago from a female beggar; she lamented that her husband had “fallen into habits that are habitual.” Well; the required reference is the paper “On Geological Time,” in the Transactions of the Geological Society of Glasgow, vol. iii. Part I. pp. 15 and 16 (§§ 19 and 20). A thousand million years ago, says Thomson, “there must have been more centrifugal force at the equator due to rotation than now, in the proportion of 64 to 49…. If the earth rotated seventeen times faster, bodies would fly off at the equator…. If you go back ten thousand million years ago—which, I believe, will not satisfy some geologists—the earth must have been rotating more than twice as fast as at present—and if it had been solid then [which he thinks improbable], it must be now something totally different from what it was.” Such a state of things he seems to consider inconsistent with any organic life such as we know of. Surely the connection of this question with the argument from retardation by tidal friction is too plain to need exposition.