![]() ![]() īut before arriving at that final answer, the scientist had to overcome some difficulties. Eventually, Patterson moved to the California Institute of Technology, where he created the first scientific clean room to try to get a proper reading on his crystals. He was enlisted to measure the amount of lead in zircon crystals from a fragment of a meteorite - a leftover space rock from the dawn of the solar system - to better understand the age of the Earth. Many scientists had tried to date the age of the planet before Patterson, coming up with different numbers, but he did something different during his experiments. ![]() Patterson's work initially focused on the Earth's age. The newest episode of "Cosmos," called "The Clean Room," takes viewers on a tour of Patterson's work and the industry that fought him as he tried to learn more about lead and its harmful effects. Sunday night's episode (April 20) of " Cosmos: A Spacetime Odyssey" explored the life of Clair Patterson, a geochemist who pinpointed Earth's age for the first time and also uncovered a secret: Lead contamination is a major and potentially deadly problem.
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