Possibly untrue science news

Just American Boomers get a chance at that kind of nostalgia? How disappointing!

Tsk! His SI prefixes need better coverage, though. No deci- or centi-? No deca- or hecto-? My night to be disappointed, I guess. :wink:

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The geological periods one has been out of date since
 well
 early 90s? These things keep changing. American geologists used to distinguish Mississippian and Pennsylvanian.

The relevant paper-- often the only thing of value in half baked science journalism pieces-- is available at arxiv:

Does the “demotion” of Pluto to minor planet status hinder the political case for a second pluto mission? It might. A naive observer might (without first checking out the orbital mechanics) point out that Neptune and Uranus-- both major planets-- have not been probed in depth.

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I mean, if you want to use your own different definition where many large moons, the sun, and ball bearings are all planets, it’ll make communication and understanding harder for no obvious reason, but I certainly can’t stop you. I’m curious if you’ve thought out what your criterion actually is, though.

A sphere is of course spherical but then even the Earth isn’t quite a sphere. As things rotate faster they get more and more oblate. Presumably a disc is not spherical; how close are you allowed to get?

Likewise Ceres is pretty spherical but as you go down in size they get increasingly less so. Is one big crater ok? What if the whole side is dented? Do you count a rounded cube, or an unrounded cube? If it’s ok to be a bit prolate, would a dumbbell shape count? How chunky do you need them to be before you stop saying “well, I call that a planet”?

In contrast to orbit clearing, where there is a sharp gap between the eight biggest masses around the sun and all the others, it’s really hard to draw a meaningful separation. It’s another thing these complaints sometimes bring up, that shape makes more sense, but I’ve never seen a real attempt to make that work. Again, it doesn’t seem like that’s the point.

Well, and I suppose it’s not just boomers either. Part of the reason this its so frustrating to me is that it’s a microcosm of how everything seems to be going. Where one after another, everything you care about gets seized on by entitled dicks, and from then on it has to be entirely about their whims.

Back when things were good, you know, they didn’t have feathers on their dinosaurs. They didn’t have or at least pay attention to all these movies featuring minorities. They didn’t have all this moral complexity about whether the founding fathers were really perfect geniuses, or people doubting whether Columbus and Lee were really heroes. And they only had two genders, the one that you rescue in video games and the one that get to be ghostbusters. And how dare anyone want to try or saying anything else.

And hey, maybe if they yell loud enough we can still get a nice Solar System reboot with exactly the nine planets we deserve. We could have J. J. Abrams direct it, hit all the old favorite parts without any new things to worry about. Make astronomy great again for the people who count.

I guess the other part of the reason is one of the ways I’d been dealing with all the world’s crap is by following space news, the big beautiful universe that is supposed to be beyond everything, and then things like this inject the one right into the other. I guess at least the looking is still beautiful, until Musk decides to bury the night sky behind one of his vanity projects.

Unless you divide the Carboniferous that way, those are still the ones for the Phanerozoic. The Precambrian seems less important to know in detail, but how about Some rocks or stones can easily stay through countless eons for the Proterozoic ones?

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I only took a couple geology classes, but the Ediacaran or Vendian was in informal use in the late 1990s, though it wasn’t officially defined until 2004. And the Quaternary was reintroduced and officially redefined in 2009.

This paragraph summarises so much it deserves a larger forum. IMHO it’s pretty much perfect.

It says something about education funding and attitudes that I had to spend quite a lot of effort convincing my tween-age nieces dinosaurs had feathers, when we’ve known that since before they were born.

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Well, of course not. You don’t want to have to pluck your hadrosaur before you roast it, you know! Preparing the evening meal was so much less messy when there weren’t any feathers to contend with, feathers and
 Can we be frank here? Dino fluff.

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The first step towards accepting that nothing of value was lost is to accept that value is a social construct that has nothing to do with you.

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I’m not sure if they’re trying to do communication between brains, or researching how to create the Jaegers from Pacific Rim


Electrical activity from the brains of a pair of human subjects was transmitted to the brain of a third individual in the form of magnetic signals, which conveyed an instruction to perform a task in a particular manner.

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Alexa is obsolete. Order anything via your Amazon BrainButton!ℱ

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Christian Huygens speculates on Jupiter’s shipbuilding prowess.

If their Globe is divided like ours, between Sea and Land, as it’s evident it is (else whence could all those Vapors in Jupiter proceed?) we have great reason to allow them the Art of Navigation, and not proudly ingross so great, fo useful a thing to our selves
Especially considering the great advantages Jupiter and Saturn have for sailing, in having fo many Moons to direct their Course, by whose guidance they may attain easily to the Knowledge that we are not Masters of, of the Longitude of Places.
And what a troop of things follow from this allowance? If they have Ships, they must have Sails and Anchors, Ropes, Pulleys, and Rudders, which are of particular use in direćting a Ship’s Course against the Wind, and in sailing different ways with the same Gale.
And perhaps they may not be without thes use of the Compass too, for the magnetical matter, which continually passes through the Pores of our Earth, is of such a nature, that it’s very probable the Planets have something like it.

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Suck it Pluto. You’ll never be big enough-- not in my lifetime. Not in humanity’s lifetime, not in.

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If the presence of clouds proves the presence of land and sea, then the published data on Venus is false and misrepresents its true Aphroditography.

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Hurrah! I love learning new words.

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Not venereography? Be simpler to pronounce.

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It’s analogous to areography, which is a word so common and vulgar as to be attested in the wiktionary.

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Veneris is Latin, -ÎłÏÎ±Ï†ÎŻÎ± is Greek, some people object to mixing them together

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Anakumbjan is a perfectly kromulent word!

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Like automobile?

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