[meteorite-list] Fw: term definitions and usage

From: Richard Montgomery <rickmont_at_meteoritecentral.com>
Date: Mon, 25 Jul 2011 18:11:12 -0700
Message-ID: <22790574BBC443E0A447F47A7C5275C5_at_bosoheadPC>

Hello Listoids,

Ah! Cleverly disguised as a neophyte question, my query as to usage of
terms of age has spawned quite the rally of input! (Actually, this is why
I brought it up.)

-Richard Montgomery



----- Original Message -----
From: "Randy Korotev" <korotev at wustl.edu>
To: <meteorite-list at meteoritecentral.com>
Sent: Monday, July 25, 2011 8:52 AM
Subject: Re: [meteorite-list] Fw: term definitions and usage


>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
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Received on Mon 25 Jul 2011 09:11:12 PM PDT