[SEMW]

...No...? If someone puts paint on a 280 million year old rock, that doesn't change the age of the rock.

[a_gnostic]

Earth rocks are about 4.54 ± 0.05 Billion years old. The atoms comprising those rocks are *about 13.787 ± 0.020 Billion years old.

[lazide]

The atoms themselves are far older, as they originated from some nuclear synthesis event in a star somewhere else (generally).

Rocks on earth are rarely that old, as they’re composed from sedimentation (aka they get weathered then deposited), metamorphosed (compacted and modified by heat and pressure), cool from a lava flow (basalt, etc). [https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_rock_types]

Each of those forms/types changes fundamental properties of the rocks which allows for dating.

Some rocks are literally only tens of years old, or even formed yesterday. Like basalt formed from lava from active volcanos.

[sophacles]

Most earth rocks are much younger than that. They get melted down, mixed with different melted rocks (etc) and form new rocks all the time.

[gghffguhvc]

Hydrogen and helium on earth would be 13.7 billion years old but many of the other atoms on earth are more like 4.6 billion years old.