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" <koro...@wustl.edu>
To: <meteorite-list@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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