Review of "The Age of Everything" in 
Ciel et Terre (Bulletin of the Belgian Royal Society of Astronomy, Meteorology and Earth Science)
Volume 124, 1 January/Februray 2008
By R. DEJAIFEE

(Translated from the French)

A surprising book in the way that it shows an eclectic character in its
twelve chapters respectively devoted to: (1) a brief general introduction;
(2) the calendars of the [ancient] Mayans; (3) the phenomenon of
precession, the pole star and the age of the pyramids; (4) the physics of
carbon-14; (5) the problem of the standardization of the dates from the
carbon-14 technique and the history of the air; (6) the problems of
carbon-14 and the peopling of the New World; (7) the dating techniques of
potassium/argon and DNA and the age of fossil hominids; (8) the puzzle of
molecular dating and the numerous different types of mammals; (9)
meteorites and the age of the solar system; (10) colors, luminosity and
the age of stars; (11) distances, redshifts and the age of the universe,
(12) the parameterization of the age of the universe.

In fact, the author, a researcher in the astronomy department at Cornell
University, intends to consider the problem of different ages --from of
order a thousand years (Mayans) up to 14 billion years (universe)-- and
more precisely that of the determination of a very vast range of ages,
through a real dissection of diverse methods, (which he) uses, in an
interdisciplinary manner, to try to explain how archaeologists,
biologists, geologists, physicists, astronomers and cosmologists each
reconstruct a more or less distant past. Above all, the author seeks in
this way to explain how scientific research has been able to determine
different matters of orders of magnitude with the aid of dating techniques
capable of dating climatic changes distant or the models of human
migrations, as well as the age of stars and the universe. In short, the
author intends to cover a wide range of time scales. At once a sort of
challenge and a view ahead or far back that demonstrates the real capacity
of modern science to enable us to make contact with the distant past. Such
a book will be be interesting, even useful, for all people who have an
marked interest in questions of traveling or harking back through time.

Certain subjects apparently(?), such as the techniques of the
standardization, i.e. carbon-14 dating employs a phase to obtain the raw
data after which the dates must be properly "calibrated", were introduced
to the author from the start of his university studies and since that time
one (he?) regretted the literary, incorrect popular manner, i.e.  the
general presentation to the larger public of the "forks" or uncertainties
associated with several of these dating methods.

A good idea and a good theme, covering perhaps a subject too broad to
approach exclusively in this manner. There results from it a certain
mixture of genres and a real difficulty in comprehending certain parts of
the text that require a careful reading --even sometimes a second
reading-- before they reveal the profound meaning or the validity of the
given explanations. In short, a book that attempts to make comprehensible
how diverse types of very different researchers, each engaged in one small
part of a great variety of scientific topics, determine the age of events
that they study, and that came from a series of talks or expositions given
by the author while at the Institute for Cosmological Physics at the
University of Chicago. The lists of suggested readings on each of the
discussed themes is more useful for those readers who are particularly
interested