talkorigins.org proposed article on solar-structure confirmation of radiometric dating

[Loren Petrich]

Radiometric dating is the main technique for dating the stony material of the Solar System. The oldest known such material, calcium–aluminium-rich inclusions in carbonaceous chondrite materials, has an age of 4.57 billion years. Almost as old are chondrules, small stony grains that chondrite meteorites are named after.

But there is an alternative way of dating the Solar System, and that is extrapolating the Sun back to when it originated. It may seem like we have very little information to work with, its mass, luminosity, and composition, but there is a detailed additional source: solar oscillations or sunquakes, researched as helioseismology. These oscillations provide clues on the Sun's interior, including how much helium it has accumulated. From that amount of helium, one can find the age of the Sun.

One has to do stellar-structure calculations to find the helium-accumulation rate, and that involves both nuclear-reaction rates and the opacity of the Sun's material, how much it slows down the diffusion of light through it. The rates and the opacity involve some complicated calculations, it must be noted.

One finds an age of 4.57 - 4.59 billion years, close to meteorites' maximum age.

This calculation assumes that the Newtonian gravitational constant G is constant. But one can make it vary while keeping the Solar System's age constant. One finds that it varied at most 0.1% at the time of the formation of the Solar System.

So here also, one finds independent confirmation of the age of the Solar System.

-- References --

Calcium–aluminium-rich inclusion - Wikipedia
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Calcium%E2%80%93aluminium-rich_inclusion

The Absolute Chronology and Thermal Processing of Solids in the Solar Protoplanetary Disk | Science
https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.1226919

A Bayesian estimation of the helioseismic solar age | Astronomy & Astrophysics (A&A)
https://www.aanda.org/articles/aa/abs/2015/08/aa26419-15/aa26419-15.html

A New Helioseismic Constraint on a Cosmic-time Variation of G - IOPscience
https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.3847/2041-8213/ab86b9/meta