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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."
To think that the span of a human life is at best about 1/250 millionth of that cycle. Light from distant stars does eventually get here, it just happens on timescales that are beyond imagination.
Such a shame that we occupy such a small blink in the process, and can't witness cosmic events on any larger a level.
Rhymes that keep their secrets will unfold behind the clouds.There upon the rainbow is the answer to a neverending story
Can we break those intermediate steps into seven phases or so and declare each of those a "day", get a copy to the Pope, and settle this whole religion versus science mess now? Or at least build some bridges for the Bible folks and the Science folks to agree to something that makes a little more sense?
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Have you ever wondered why we haven't encountered intelligent life forms other than ourselves? An advanced race with regular slower-than-light starships would be able to colonize an entire galaxy within a few million years (barely an instant on a geological timescale). One possible explanation for our apparent solitude in the universe is that the number of planets with the proper conditions for developing life is vanishingly small. (Read about the http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fermi_paradox for other possibilities)
For example Earth's moon creates tides (and tide pools) and stabilizes the earth's seasons and axial tilt. According to the http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Giant_impact_hypothesis the Moon was created as a result of a chance collision between the proto-earth and a Mars-sized object. Without the presence of the Moon the conditions might have been too harsh to support life.
As we learn more about how the solar system formed we will be better able to predict which stars might have life-bearing planets, so we can begin our own colonization of the galaxy (assuming humans can survive long enough to overcome war, disease and ecological destruction).
Honestly I think the problem is in the way it was expressed. The margin of error looks better if they had stated:
"...to 4,568 million years ago, within a range of about 2 million years"
or
"...to 4,568,000,000 years ago, within a range of about 2,080,000 years"
Its easier to quickly compare the numbers against each other that way.
can't sleep slashdot will eat me
The thought of one such mentally ill leader having access to the largest stock of nuclear weapons in the world is... disturbing.
It's supposed to be.
The MAD doctrine deters nuclear war by threatening a retaliation that would likely bring down civilization and possibly end the human race and much of life on Earth.
For it to work, US presidents have to put on a show, looking crazy enough that they'd actually do it - but sane enough that the won't shoot first and can be reasoned with on issues that otherwise would have been "solved" by the outcome of a war. (IMHO it's likely the term "Mutually Assured Destruction" was chosen at least partly for the acronym, to help put on this show. Psych warfare was pretty well developed by the start of the Cold War.)
MAD is pretty terrifying. But it reversed the ongoing escalation of wars right after the bombs were proven to work under battle conditions (and two fried cities were substituted for the years of war that had been expected to be necessary to end the Japan part of WWII). It's been over half a century and no nukes have been used in war since those two.
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"This is the kind of unhelpful response that doesn't win any converts to your way of thinking."
Scientists are frequently arrogant, perhaps because the validity of scientific findings are independent of whether or not you or anyone else agrees with them. Simply put, there's no real need for winning converts -- nor is it accurate to write it off as "a way of thinking".
No.
It has had a pretty good uptime since then.
Bah, that's easy when the majority of your system is just running their idle loops! Out of the whole dang system only one core has any active clients, and it's been starting to look a little flakey lately as the client process is gobbling up all the resources.
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