When this happens gasses dissolved in the magma are able to come out of solution, forming gas bubbles (the cavities) inside it. When the magma finally reaches the surface as lava and cools, the rock solidifies around the gas bubbles and traps them inside, preserving them as holes filled with gas called vesicles.
He took them to the Argonne National Laboratory, where he was granted time on a late-model mass spectrometer. In a meeting in Wisconsin soon afterward, Patterson revealed the results of his study. The definitive age of the Earth is 4.550 billion years (give or take 70 million years). The current estimate for the age of the earth is 4.54 Â± 0.05 billion years (4.54 Ã 109 years Â± 1%).
The Age of the Earth. 1  A minimum age of the Earth can be obtained from the oldest known rocks on the Earth. 2  An estimate can be obtained from arguments in nuclear physics, which says that the 235 U/ 238 U ratio may have been 1.0 when the elements formed.