h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

A couple in Auckland NZ had a piece of space rock come through the roof of their living room this week. Apparently it's 4 1/2 billion years old (although I'm not sure how that was decided).

I just wondered how old that is compared to other bits of the universe, like the Earth, other planets etc

Earth is at least 4.5 billion years old when deduced by radiometric dating, although I'd assume that the sun and the rest of the universe is a heck of a lot older than that.

http://www.ulo.ucl.ac.uk/~diploma/year_one/usgs/radiometric_dating/ageofearth.html

Of course, something like that would never happen to me.

I bet the couple aren't even interested in astronomy...

S*d's law

GB, I'm not sure one would necessarily want this to happen though. The rock came through the roof, hit the couch, bounced up and hit the ceiling and then droppped to the floor and rolled under a table. Not what you'd expect when sitting down to watch the telly . I don't think the people where there at the time though.

The woman isn't into astronomy at all, but she does have the good sense to want the rock to stay in NZ with someone who wants it.

They are open to cash offers though if you are keen



Thanks for the link Croz

Ohhhh, how fascinating...

Wouldn't be too impressed if it came thro my house tho...and then I'd be wondering how many more pieces were following it..

Croz, interesting link

They were at home at the time:

>>"There was just a huge explosion and we looked around and there was just dust everywhere," householder Brenda Archer told the station. I don't know what to make of it, it's unbelievable. I'm just glad no one was sitting on the couch because they just would have got absolutely crowned." <<

http://www.nzherald.co.nz/storydisplay.cfm?storyID=3572212&thesection=news&thesubsection=general&thesecondsubsection=

Well at least it wasn't a by-product from a passing boeing

Sorry, I am low... *chuckles*

"The woman isn't into astronomy at all"

I KNEW it!!!!!!



*mutters expletives under breath*

Earlier in the year quite alot of news time was devoted to a story about people's cars and houses that kept getting this evil smelling brown sludge dropped onto it from the sky. Because they were in the flight path for the Wellington airport people assumed it was coming from the planes

Turned out it was from nesting ducks that had just done a long shift on the nest . They even interviewed the duck sh*t expert from the Dept. of Conservation to prove it, which was pretty entertaining

I would have thought that, wrt the Big Bang theory, all planets, suns, comets, asteroids etc. would all be the same age? I know about supernova, and gas giants etc. But they are all composed from the same matter, surely?

It all depends what you mean by how old it is

The stuff it's made of should be the same age as the universe.

But it probably became a lump of rock (as opposed to gas and dust) during the formation of the solar system (ie about 4.5 billion years ago).

Noggin

And the Universe is between 13 and 14 billion years old.

http://www.newscientist.com/news/news.jsp?id=ns99992215

How old is the Universe?

How far is up?

'Scientists say' is an unacceptable answer to a basically unanswerable question. We can say the Universe is as old as the current moment, or as old as we would like to believe, or that evidence seems to suggest it is so many billion years old, or that 'it' simply exists, has existed forever, and will continue to do so, in one form or another.

Simply stating that the Universe is a certain age bypasses the obvious question, 'what was there before the Universe?', as well as falsely objectifying that which cannot be objectified, since 'it' encompasses all existence.

It may well be that the present form of the Universe had a 'beginning', and will have an 'end'. but it is just as much an error to state that the Universe itself has either beginning or end, as it is to set bounds upon infinity.



"We are stardust..."

How interesting..

The mind boggles

Or indeed what does 13 to 14 billion years actually mean when the universe started off so dense? They must have been a huge time bending effect.

Ah, but although extremely dense the density would have been evenly distributed - for relativistic time dilation to occur distribution must be uneven. That just occurred to me

We may not know whether the universe had a beginning (or even if the question makes sense), but t6he *history* of the universe starts with the big bang - best to just settle for that.

Noggin

oooh oooooh pictures......and a price tag

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/asia-pacific/3802865.stm

Nope, I can't afford it.

As I said, nothing like this would ever happen to me.

Talk about manna from Heaven

$US5,000...they should be able to get the roof fixed for that


"But it probably became a lump of rock (as opposed to gas and dust) during the formation of the solar system (ie about 4.5 billion years ago)."

That was what impressed me - that it had been in it's _current_ form for so long.

So does that mean it definitely/probably came from within our solar system?

Yes, I'd say it came from the asteroid belt, between Mars & Jupiter.

So is there any way to know how long it's been flying round out there on it's own?

And how did it get from there to here? Doesn't the asteroid belt have an orbit?