this is a story of james hutton the father of modern geology and the development of deep time before 1788 the consensus and science was that the world was 6,000 years old in fact the precise date of creation had been in termined by Bishop Ussher of Ireland through a scholarly analysis of the Bible to be October 22nd 4004 BC even Sir Isaac Newton the father of modern science had repeated the analysis with similar results at the University of Edinburgh a professor who had known Isaac Newton instilled in the young James Hutton Newton's rules for scientific study including if observations or experimental evidence conflicts with theory then the theory must be changed to fit the facts after completing his medical studies hadn't turned to farming which gave him a chance to examine their Earth's surface in detail later in life he moved back to Edinburgh before he became involved in the management of building the 4th and Clyde canal both an application of the geological knowledge and a chance to study more of the surface of the earth not far from edinburgh castle in Holyrood Park James found what is now called Hutton section the most famous geological site in Anne Burrell the reigning theory at this time proposed that rocks had precipitated from the early ocean that once covered the earth but here hadn't found a slab of sedimentary rock that had been torn away during the injection of magma from below and then hardening to form the dull right structure known as Salisbury crags this was a clear example of the junction between the younger igneous rock and much older underlying sentiment airy rocks this evidence that some rocks must have formed from molten liquids was a direct challenge to the reigning theory but Hutton needed to find proof that the earth was really old in order to convince any of his associates to this end Hutton and two of his closest associates set out in a boat to explore the coast of Scotland and was that sick our point that he found what he was looking for here we follow a trail dedicated to Hutton with our geologist guide Angus Miller because so much better than anything you've seen before all right so what we've got is a grey walky Sunstone and right hand side you can see that the layers are standing up on em and that is because after they were formed they were subject to plate tectonics they were folded up and shoved up into these very steep sided layers and then erosion have taken hold and it started to work away the gray rocky layers and then conditions changed in the red sandstone started to accumulate here so there's still red sandstone lying on the left-hand side all the way across that much flatter line layers the Lord parts of it has got barnacles on it so it's the color changes but it's the red sandstone and what Hutton realized is when we saw it here was that there was a variation in the surface of the unconformity that greywacke where that was being worn away was subject to natural forces and it was the harder stuff was surviving better than the softer stuff so there was actually an existing topography that was buried by the red sandstone accumulating on top of it so we're over to the left hand side you see more of the griot key just sticking up through the layers of red sandstone and that's what one of the things that James Holt picked up his sketch that the harder layers stick up the other thing that Hutton saw here for the first time and was very pleased about it was the lowest layers of the red sandstone have got chunks of the older Sun stone embedded in them so this is important for him in terms of showing the progression of different episodes that have formed us series of chapters of the story it didn't all happen at once it was there was no need for any further of our higher power he disguised or no need for a higher power to explain this it could be explained by the processes of the earth he just needed time and so we picked out the fact that the original accumulation of the gray rocks and then the information of them so they've been squashed from north to south and the compressing a carpet so built up into these whole series of steep-sided faults that's set to and then the next chapter is the erosion of that existing rock so it starts to wear away and we get a dry land here with ridges and valleys and then step four as the accumulation of the red sand stones and most of the red sandstone is derived from material that's come from the north so the time it was forming on the horizon to the north would have been proper mountains he'll go through the Highlands rule to the Highlands are they're impressive but they're not high and never go back 400 million years to when the red sandstone was forming now there have been a towering mountain range a Himalayan scale mountain range and on the horizon there I know it was a eroding and material has been swept down here so it started to accumulate here and then stage 5 is that the the red signs thought itself has had a slight tectonic deformation as well not nearly as severe as the earlier rock but it's totally date towards a sea at a low angle and then finally we're in stage six chapter six of the story erosion is going on it's been going on here for millions of years and it's stripped away what was a huge amount of red sandstone that accumulated above at this point it gradually worked his way the Seas come in here and this helped you in the erosion and we're at the stage now where the very last bits of the red sands to run clinging on and top of that of the grape and it's still so this was even certainly one of the most significant events in the development of geological thoughts that day the three of them came here 1788 a fair was a person that really described it particularly well were carried back in time to when the rock and what she stood was at the bottom of the sea and the Sun storm before it was a jet beginning to be deposited their mind seemed to grow giddy by looking so far into the abyss so they got it play for God Hutton jumped around in the rocks and told them the story and playfair he saw what I was talking about he understood the immensity of and this better day at the end for this anyway it became sensible how much further reason may sometimes called an imagination we ventured to follow so he was saying really that this was that the scientific facts presented by Hutton the series of events it was unbelievable but it was backed up by their yeah after the trip to siccar point but this paper was published in the Proceedings of the Royal Society but has worked and become widely known until after his death when one of his companions on that trip John Playfair publicized Hutton's ideas in a book entitled illustration of Hutton's theory of the earth Charles Lyell was born eight months after Hutton died went on to expand on Hutton's ideas and wrote the principles of geology which became the standard geology text for the next 100 years Charles Darwin brought a copy of Lyles book along on the voyage of the Beagle and this helped shape his slinky with Hutton's theory allowing the time necessary for natural selection to work back to the initial question how old is the earth HUD's answer was we find no vestige of the beginning no prospect of an end as science progressed we have developed the tools to estimate the earth to be 4.5 billion years old we have taken the walk to learn about Hutton and how he began to convince the world about the enormity of time and the great influence deep time had on the development of science you