Solar System Date of Birth Determined

Invisible Pink Unicorn writes "UC Davis researchers have dated the earliest step in the formation of the solar system — when microscopic interstellar dust coalesced into mountain-sized chunks of rock — to 4,568 million years ago, within a range of about 2,080,000 years. In the second stage, mountain-sized masses grew quickly into about 20 Mars-sized planets and, in the third and final stage, these small planets smashed into each other in a series of giant collisions that left the planets we know today. The dates of these intermediary stages are well established. The article abstract is available from Astrophysical Journal Letters."

Comments

Re:Margin of Error

[CensorshipDonkey]

-- to 4,568 million years ago, within a range of about 2,080,000 years. And i was born 22 years ago, within a range of 10 years Pretty big error (almost 50%)

Incorrect. 2 million years is less than 0.05% of 4.5 billion years. Pretty damn precise, relatively speaking. Read the units on the text you cited.

Re:So many gifts..!

[xPsi]

...to 4,568 million years ago, within a range of about 2,080,000 years.

Similarly, I've discovered my birthday to be defined as subsequent to July.
At a glance it might seem like a crude measurement, but its really about 4 parts in 10000, which is really quite good. This would be like knowing your birthday to within 4 hours during the year (better than I know my own birthday off the top of my head, to be honest).