[meteorite-list] Fw: term definitions and usage

From: Randy Korotev <korotev_at_meteoritecentral.com>
Date: Mon, 25 Jul 2011 10:52:05 -0500
Message-ID: <201107251549.p6PFnGA15789_at_levee.wustl.edu>

I attended my first scientific conference as a graduate student
sometime in the early 70's. My first exposure to lunar geochronology
was a session I attended at that conference. I was surprised to
learn that the community of isotope geochronologists was very
contentious to the point of being insulting and rude. After nearly
every talk somebody got up and asked a pointed question or made a
damning comment.

After one talk someone in the audience got up and chastised the
speaker for having presented all his age data with the units
"byr." The chastiser was very adamant that "billion years" was an
obsolete and a just-plain-wrong term, in part because the word
billion means a different things in America and Britain. "The proper
term is Ga for gigaannum (you idiot)!"

The next speaker got up and started his talk like this: "A nano
gigaannum ago at this conference we presented some data..." It took
almost until the end of the sentence for the audience to appreciate
the joke and erupt into laughter.

Randy Korotev
Received on Mon 25 Jul 2011 11:52:05 AM PDT