The difficulty in determining the age of Earth stems from the fact that Earth's surface is constantly changing. Geological processes such as erosion, plate tectonics, and volcanic activity continually recycle the Earth's crust, destroying and covering up evidence of the planet's early history. However, despite these challenges, scientists have been able to estimate the age of Earth by dating the oldest rocks on the planet and meteorites that have fallen to Earth, using radiometric dating techniques. The consensus estimate for the age of the Earth is about 4.54 billion years, with a margin of error of about 1%.
