SESSION IV 175 "Yes." "Then we'll be able to tell how old the earth is because geology is exact science,' FREMONT-SMITH: You remember I mentioned the half-lifeof facts is getting shorter and shorter. I'm glad to have it illustrated. DONALDSON: The next day they might be down 200 feet, 300 feet, 400 feet, 800 feet, 900 feet, and they were quite convinced they were in a hole and they had to change their estimation of the thickness of the coral, which meant they had to revise their estimate of the age of the earth, and in turn their concept of how the moon was formed. FREMONT-SMITH: And that includes the tides. DONALDSON: Yes! [Laughter] And this went on until they finally reached a fantastic depth of about 1,200 feet and they still hadn't found out how old the earth was or how thick the coral cap might be. By this time we were running out of food and liquor, which worried everybody because the supply planes were just bringing mud to grease this hole they were drilling down into the atoll. The following year the geologists maved over ta Eniwetok and beganto drillthere, They drilled down to a total of some 4,300 feet before they came to the basal strata on which the coral was anchored. FREMONT-SMITH: DONALDSON: Yes. They did find it there? They actually found that there was a bottom to this boundless pile of calcium carbonate, The illustration, Ihope, is not wasted. But it's indicative of some of the needs to know in the natiral environment in which we are working. The seas and the atolic within the seas are so imperfectly known ‘that we sometimes find great gaps in our thinking because we don't have the physical and biological parameters upon which to tase our work. It's like the statement of the senior Senator from our State who repeatedly has said that we know a great deal more about the back side of the moon than we do about the oceans that cover 72 percent of the carth's surface. With this as background, maybe we can be a bit more specific in the things that we are going to be talking about.