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The Anthropocene Epoch Began With 1945 Atomic Bomb Test, Scientists Say
hypnosec writes: Scientists have proposed July 16, 1945 as the beginning of the Anthropocene Epoch. That was the day of the first nuclear detonation test. They say "the Great Acceleration" — the period when human activities started having a significant impact on Earth – are a good mark of the beginning of the new epoch. Since then, there has been a significant increase in population, environmental upheaval on land and oceans, and global connectivity. The group says in their article (abstract), "The beginning of the nuclear age ... marks the historic turning point when humans first accessed an enormous new energy source – and is also a time level that can be effectively tracked within geological strata, using a variety of geological clues."
does it really matter? no, not to us, not right now. but generations from now it will be nice for the historians to have a name to go with the time frame (not like they wouldnt simply make one up as we have done with all other periods in time to date)
have you seen my sig? there are many others like it but none that are the same
All science is either mathematics, or stamp collecting. This would be printing a stamp and adding it to a collection of already printed stamps.
We had access to coal and oil for a lot longer than nuclear, and fossil fuels today still represent 10x as much energy generated/used as nuclear. linky
The figures are from 2008 - before fukushima, and nuclear plant construction is going nowhere, while China produces 1 new coal plant every day.
"Transparent" is a shit show that trades on every stereotype going. A man in drag is NOT a transsexual.
The Anthropocene Epoch ended when the Bad Slashdot Style Epoch began after the following style code was introduced:
#comments { clear:both; display:block; position:relative; padding: 0; margin: 0 0 0 122px; padding-right: 1.5em;z-index:1;}
Get rid of the 122px left margin--it's wasting a lot of space.
Also... from TFAbstract, they chose the date because all of the nuclear explosions have left a clear marker of radioisotopes which can be easily located when tracing the geological record.
I don't read your sig. Why are you reading mine?
I'd mark it at the transition from when things were mostly muscle powered, and thus limited in total energy expenditure by food production, to when most things were powered by other fuel sources. Once that switch occurred our ability to radically reshape the environment leapt upwards by several orders of magnitude.
The nuclear blasts produce more obvious changes in the geological strata than the coal and other industrial changes do, so it's easier to trace. When looking at geological timeframes, the 200 years or so difference is a blink of an eye. It's not especially useful now while both periods are so recent, but it will become more useful as time goes on.
You almost have a point but that if it's only important for future scientists, let them define it based on better informed notions. I'm positive that the radio or some industrial landmark would make more sense. E.g. first mass pollutions, which do have environmental impact. Medieval deforestation of Europe may be a candidate too.
the detonation of the atomic bomb is a perfectly reasonable way to mark the beginning of a new epoch, because there is a very real and easily identifiable geologic marker for that event (radioactive isotopes & plastic in the topsoil.) if millions of years from now aliens discovered our planet and looked through geological data, and wanted to classify periods based on that data, it's a safe bet that the sudden proliferation of radioactive isotopes and appearance of an entirely new substance (plastic) would be something that they noticed.
as for the necessity of defining a new epoch - would you deny that humans have profoundly changed the planet? no value judgements being made here, just straight facts, the planet is WAY FUCKING DIFFERENT than it was 1000 years ago due to human population explosions and human construction. also, lots of newly-extinct species.
but, i at least agree with you about nuclear power being the solution to a lot of our problems, if we would stop being such pussies about it. that has nothing to do with the topic at hand, though.
Yeah, it'd be like using Latin for scientific terminology today.
You're thinking of the Spankocene Era.
Unf. NN grrr mgrgrlrgl. Snarf? Brrrp. Fapfapfap. Queeeeg! Ook.
You sound like my niece.
Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
And like my knees.
It little behooves the best of us to comment on the rest of us.
Also... from TFAbstract, they chose the date because all of the nuclear explosions have left a clear marker of radioisotopes which can be easily located when tracing the geological record.
And importantly, this will be true globally. This seems to be what most posters here seem to be ignoring... A hundred thousand years from now you'll probably be able to dig into the ground and identify this epoch anywhere on Earth where the rocks are old enough by the distinct atomic decay signature, among other things.
E pluribus unum
Today is January 16, 69 AE (Anthropocene Era)
Someone born in 1946 CE will now be referred to as: Born in 1 AE
Someone born in 1945 CE will now be referred to as "Born in 0 AE"; the year of the Anthropocene Epoch.
1944 CE will now be referred to as "1 BAE"; 1 year before the Anthropocene Epoch, etc
In this manner, every year renumbered.
And of course, tomorrow will be 1/17/69.
Now, if we described stuff by it's percentages of fire earth air and water and spirit...
shouldn't that be fire, earth, air, water, and Leeloo?
This space unintentionally left blank.
It's a bit like the iridium spike at the K-T boundary in that the use of nuclear weapons is an event that will have a worldwide signal, in fact it wouldn't surprise me if they got the idea from the asteroid impact. This would be a bit ironic because Alvarez, the guy who discovered the impact, was a Manhattan project alum who actually worked on the explosive lenses and triggers used in the Trinity implosion bomb. The issue with using Trinity is that from a biological/evolutionary standpoint its not that meaningful an event. The Chicxulub impact is a huge deal, it's the driver of the biggest mass extinction in 250 million years. The Trinity test has the advantage of being easy to measure but nuclear weapons have had pretty much zero effect on the biosphere. In fact, primitive hunter-gatherers running around with fire and spears have a vastly larger effect than nuclear bombs. After Homo sapiens moves out of Africa into Australia, Europe, and the Americas, we see massive dieoffs of the megafauna which, combined with the use of fire to alter the landscape, dramatically alter the fauna and vegetation on a continental scale. From an evolutionary standpoint, these migrations are important; they mark the first time the species began to alter the world on the level of entire ecosystems. So I'd argue that the migration of Homo sapiens out of Africa would be the defining event, but obviously that's kind of hard to date.
nice try but coal from the industrial age also threw heavy radioisotopes into the air, starting centuries ago
we use latin words to be unambiguous
We could use plenty of other schemes to get the same effect without having to use a dead language. The grand parent's point remains.
Nobody speaks it.
I don't know. I think it still gets used on an ad hoc basis.
You never know what is enough unless you know what is more than enough. - Blake