An Exciting Day at the Rock Shop

How old is the earth and how did it form? That is a question that we will most likely never know, but science continues to find more and more more information everyday that helps us understand the early days of Earth. The article "A Cool Earth" by John W. Valley provided information on some very interesting findings and presents them in a way that stays loyal to Fahnestock and Secor's explanation of scientific discourse. I was able to see it this way due to the content of the article and the way Valley organized the findings.

This article "A Cool Earth?" stayed faithful to Fahnestock and Secor's discussion on scientific discourse due to the subject content alone. The article introduced information that shows an idea of how the Earth may have formed that is different from ideas that had been accepted in the past. He stated that it was when new technology introduced in the 1980s, scientists were able to date rocks and investigate findings better and it was just within the past few years they had found a type of rock the "zircon" that could be dated back 4.3 billion years. While in past classes that I have taken in Geologly, I saw this as very relevant since the accepted age of the earth before these findings was 4 billion years old, that is somewhat different from the 4.3 billion years stated by Valley.

The organization of the article follow's the method of using stasis and ascending information. The stasis of the article stars out with the accepted idea that the Earth started out as a huge firey molten mass, the idea that most scientists and readers had accepted. He moves into stating the findings, but in the order of how they were found. He starts off by stating the improvemenst of technology enabled them to dig deeper into finding the age and formation of the zircon grains. He moves into stating that rocks and crystals being found in areas of Australia and Canada were starting to show signs of an age older than the accepted 4 billion years and of a different formation than the firey molten ball that was believed by scientists to be the way that the Earth formed. Valley really followed an ascending way of organization by starting out with the accepted way the Earth formed and moved into the new ideas, something that really made the reader feel as if he is saying this is a new idea instead of this is what I have found now accept it.

John W. Valley was really able to follow the term provided by Fahnestock, Secor, and Gross in this article. He was able to organize his ideas in a way that went from old to new information and he also introduced information that is not known to most people. This was a very good example of scientific discourse.