Measuring Eternity

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This narrative explores the journey of religious figures, philosophers, astronomers, geologists, physicists, and mathematicians over four centuries as they sought to answer a crucial question at the crossroads of science and religion: When did the universe begin? The quest for the universe's conception has been pursued by some of history's most brilliant minds. Bishop James Ussher, for instance, dedicated fifty years to his work, concluding that the world was created in 4004 B.C. Although this date was wildly inaccurate, it gained widespread acceptance and appeared in early twentieth-century Bibles. Martin Gorst vividly illustrates how theology let Ussher down, as it had for others like Theophilus of Antioch. The eighteenth-century naturalist Comte de Buffon attempted to calculate the Earth's age, arriving at 74,832 years, while fossil hunter Johann Scheuchzer mistakenly identified a large salamander imprint as evidence of a drowned man from Noah's flood. Science progressed through Darwinism, thermodynamics, and radioactivity, culminating in astronomers using the Hubble Space Telescope to estimate the universe's age at approximately 13.4 billion years. This engaging account takes readers into the lives of scholars and scientists, chronicling their often quixotic quest to unravel the mystery of the universe's origins.