The English astronomer J. Jeans called all life, terrestrial and hypothetical extraterrestrial, "the disease of an aging planet." Then, in the 1920s, when he came up with this unflattering metaphor, the geochronological method of studying rocks (analysis of radioactive decay) was not yet known, with the help of which their age was determined. Subsequently, it turned out that some of the fossils of ancient mollusks were formed 3.5 - 4.2 billion years ago. The age of the Earth itself, apparently, does not exceed 4.5 - 5 billion years. So the Earth is only a few hundred million years older than life that arose on it, and there is no need to talk about an "aging planet" that only in its declining years turned out to be burdened with life. |