What is the minimum age of Earth. We are given a hint of: If the age of Earth were equal to one calendar year, the 1492 arrival of Christopher Columbus in America would have occurred at five seconds to midnight Dec. 31.

Question

What is the minimum age of Earth. We are given a hint of: If the age of Earth were equal to one calendar year, the 1492 arrival of Christopher Columbus in America would have occurred at five seconds to midnight Dec. 31.

That confuses me even more.

Answer 1

According to Wikipedia, the age of the earth is 4.54 billion years (within 1%).

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Age_of_the_Earth

According to the analogy, the age of the Earth in years is:
(2010-1492)*(86400*365)/5
=3267129600 years
= 3.3 billion years
A pretty close analogy.