Backtracking 7 The way science is...

As I continue reading Gamow’s article things I learned are once again brought to mind and I do think they are worth sharing. So ya know how I was talking about how the larger elements where formed in star fusion? Well they didn’t know that until rather recently. In fact in this article I’m reading Gamow mentions that the heavier elements were created before the stars were formed. This, of course is not the prevailing theory today but they that’s what they thought back then. They also thought the universe was about 5 billion years old. So since we measure the radioactive elements (ya know like carbon 14 from carbon dating for the dino’s) to be about 5 billion years old they thought they had to be formed very early on in the universe…which lead to all kinds of wrong assumptions. But, today we know heavy elements are formed in stars and the universe is about 14 billion years old. Just goes to show you how if we have one or two pieces of the puzzle wrong we can get a lot wrong.