User:Wtmitchell/MvU

working

<>version 0.2<>

This is a fresh start at pulling together and documenting some thoughts I've been having lately. My first attempt, just barely started, was between individual persons and the universe. There are lots of scale differences there: size, mass, timespan, and lots more. I tried focusing on timespan and I didn't get far -- the differences at the two ends of that timespan scale were just too great for any comparison to be drawn,.

What I was really trying to do, I guess, was to point up the differences in the magnitude of the differences at the two ends of that scale and at a few points in betweern. Being human, I related those differences more to their meaning on my end of that scale that at the other end. Anyhow, I'm starting this second attempt a lot closer to my end, and I'm starting it more in terms of size than of timespan. I'll probably get to timespan a bit further on.

Googling around for a starting point with a scale range small enough to get my mind aund, I found a book titled "The Elephant and the Flea" . (https://images.search.yahoo.com/search/images?p=the+elephant+and+the+flea&fr=mcafee&type=E210US91088G0&imgurl=https%3A%2F%2Fcovers.openlibrary.org%2Fb%2Fid%2F67567-L.jpg#id=2&iurl=https%3A%2F%2Fcovers.openlibrary.org%2Fb%2Fid%2F67567-L.jpg&action=click). Some more googling turned up another book titled, "Forget the Elephant, watch out for the flea" (https://www.justinherald.com/product/forget-the-elephants-watch-out-for-the-fleas/). I didn't read either book but I dipped into both of them a bit; they both looked intresting but they were focused on a context that was more local than and also quite different from what I was focused on. The title of the second book struck me because the conclusion I was shooting to reach was something like, "fleas are inconsequential from the viewpoint of the elephant"., but in a larger context outside of that metaphor.

The context I had in mind has humanity in the place of the flea and the universe in place of the elephant. The human-universe scale range s much larger than the elephant-flea range, regardless of whether the scale concerns size, mass, timespan, or something else. Let's consider timespan.

<>version 0.1<>

Working intro

This is presently a trivial piece of work. It is not intended for wide publication. It is in pretty rough shape and I may never get around to cleaning it up.

Back in the 1970s, I wrote a few articles for publication in popular magazines. From what I recall, they were about computer programming and/or presented bits of software I had written. One of the latter presented a program I had written in BASIC, and the program as published omitted a few lines (a corrected program was eventually republished). I discovered through this that the process of organizing an article for publication was an arduous and not well paid and that the post-publication work (particularly dealing with letters from the readers of those articles) took a lot of time away from other things where I would rather be spending it. That ended my short foray into authorship.

Since the early 2000s, I've somehow drifted into editing Wikipedia articles, including creating some articles from scratch. I have found that this process often helped me organize my thoughts about a topic, hence the the following stuff (as of 21:32, 22 October 2023 (UTC))

Bill Mitchell

Work in progress

• The universe is about 13.8 billion years old.
• Our galaxy formed about 13.6 billion years ago, when the universe was quite young. Our galaxy has been around for about 98.55% as long as the universe.
• Our sun and its solar system, including the earth, are about 4.5 billion years old. Our solar system, including our sun and the earth, has been around for about 32.6% as long as our galaxy and the universe.
• By about 4 billion years ago, the earth had begun to form land masses. By 480 million years ago, tese land masses were scattered along or south of the equator. by about 240 million years ago, most of them had consolidated into a single supercontinent known today as ;;Pangea. This supercontinent began to break up about about 240 million years ago, with the fragments moving at rates of perhaps half an inch per year.

Working stuff

Repositioned table from {{Geology to Paleobiology}}

Units in geochronology and stratigraphy

Segments of rock (strata) in chronostratigraphy	Time spans in geochronology	Notes to geochronological units
Eonothem	Eon	4 total, half a billion years or more
Erathem	Era	10 defined, several hundred million years
System	Period	22 defined, tens to ~one hundred million years
Series	Epoch	34 defined, tens of millions of years
Stage	Age	99 defined, millions of years
Chronozone	Chron	subdivision of an age, not used by the ICS timescale

General references

Wikipedia articles, etc.

• Chronology
• Geochronology
• Template:Life timeline
• Geologic time scale
• Eon (Geology)
• Era
• Period (from Geologic time scale § Terminology|
• Epoch
• Age (Geology)
• Chron