2925: Earth Formation Site - Revision history

Xurkitree10: /* Transcript */

2024-10-09T12:41:05Z

‎Transcript

Xurkitree10: /* Transcript */

2024-10-03T21:58:14Z

‎Transcript

172.69.150.184: The Earth did not form from a collapsing cloud.

2024-07-31T15:52:34Z

The Earth did not form from a collapsing cloud.

Laser813: Undo revision 341930 by 162.158.186.33 (talk) Historical markers, by definition, are not about future events, let alone fictional ones. Sorry to be a buzzkill.

2024-05-12T23:06:23Z

Undo revision 341930 by 162.158.186.33 (talk) Historical markers, by definition, are not about future events, let alone fictional ones. Sorry to be a buzzkill.

162.158.186.33: /* Explanation */ historical marker before the event

2024-05-11T21:09:05Z

‎Explanation: historical marker before the event

B for brain: /* Explanation */

2024-05-05T09:34:12Z

‎Explanation

172.70.90.173: /* Explanation */

2024-05-02T08:17:06Z

‎Explanation

172.70.90.172: /* Explanation */

2024-05-02T08:16:23Z

‎Explanation

172.71.254.40 at 23:56, 30 April 2024

2024-04-30T23:56:00Z

Laser813: /* Explanation */ The previous comment is smart and well-sourced, but I personally think it goes farther down the rabbit hole than we need to. Feel free to put it back if you disagree though.

2024-04-30T19:04:31Z

‎Explanation: The previous comment is smart and well-sourced, but I personally think it goes farther down the rabbit hole than we need to. Feel free to put it back if you disagree though.

@@ Line 65: / Line 65: @@
 ==Transcript==
 :[Cueball is standing in front of a fancy, rectangular shaped sign in a field of grass. The sign has 4 stars on top in a small circular section with the words HISTORICAL MARKER underneath it. Rocks and plants are scattered across the ground. The sign reads:]
 :<big>EARTH</big>

@@ Line 67: / Line 67: @@
 {{incomplete transcript|Generated by EARTH — Do NOT delete this tag too soon.}}
-:[Cueball is standing in front of a sign in a field of grass. Rocks and plants are scattered across the ground. The sign reads:]
+:[Cueball is standing in front of a fancy, rectangular shaped sign in a field of grass. The sign has 4 stars on top in a small circular section with the words HISTORICAL MARKER underneath it. Rocks and plants are scattered across the ground. The sign reads:]
 :<big>EARTH</big>
 :FORMATION SITE

← Older revision		Revision as of 15:52, 31 July 2024
Line 40:		Line 40:

	Historical markers are placed at precise locations where historical, religious, and even mythological events are believed to have happened — such as where battles have been fought, or where famous people resided or accomplished something. Typically these signs refer to more recent events.		Historical markers are placed at precise locations where historical, religious, and even mythological events are believed to have happened — such as where battles have been fought, or where famous people resided or accomplished something. Typically these signs refer to more recent events.
		+
		+	'''Scientific inaccuracies'''
		+
		+	Contrary to what the comic suggests, the current scientific consensus is that the Earth did not form from a collapsing cloud of dust and gas. While the mechanism of the Earth's formation is an open area of research, the general idea is that first, the Sun formed from a collapsing cloud of dust and gas. The remaining dust and gas formed a disk around the Sun called the Sun's protoplanetary disk. From this disk, the planets formed. There is currently no consensus on the details of how this happened. But roughly speaking, dust particles in the Sun's protoplanetary disk collide and stick together until the resulting body is massive enough to slowly accrete matter through gravitation. So while the Sun formed from a collapsing cloud of dust and gas, the Earth did not.
		+
		+	Further reading: E.g. {{w\|Pebble accretion}}, {{w\|Streaming instability}}

	'''The title text'''		'''The title text'''

@@ Line 39: / Line 39: @@
 '''#3: Historical markers typically refer to events within the past several centuries'''
-Historical markers are placed at precise locations where historical, religious, and even mythological events are believed to have happened — such as where battles have been fought, or where famous people resided or accomplished something (or are predicted to happen in the future, such as the marker at the birthplace of James Kirk, a character in Star Trek). Typically these signs refer to more recent events.
+Historical markers are placed at precise locations where historical, religious, and even mythological events are believed to have happened — such as where battles have been fought, or where famous people resided or accomplished something. Typically these signs refer to more recent events.
 '''The title text'''

@@ Line 39: / Line 39: @@
 '''#3: Historical markers typically refer to events within the past several centuries'''
-Historical markers are placed at precise locations where historical, religious, and even mythological events are believed to have happened — such as where battles have been fought, or where famous people resided or accomplished something. Typically these signs refer to more recent events.
+Historical markers are placed at precise locations where historical, religious, and even mythological events are believed to have happened — such as where battles have been fought, or where famous people resided or accomplished something (or are predicted to happen in the future, such as the marker at the birthplace of James Kirk, a character in Star Trek). Typically these signs refer to more recent events.
 '''The title text'''

← Older revision		Revision as of 09:34, 5 May 2024
Line 10:		Line 10:

	==Explanation==		==Explanation==
−	~~{{incomplete\|Created by TWO 4,450,002,024-YEAR-OLD PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATES - Please this edit this comment when editing this page. Do NOT delete this historical tag too soon.}}~~
−
	[[Cueball]] reads an historical marker celebrating the formation of the {{w\|Earth}}. As with most historical markers, it claims to rest on the exact spot of the event, that the Earth formed in this specific location. It also specifies the Earth's formation to the precise year 4.45 billion ({{w\|Long and short scales\|4,450 million}}) BCE.		[[Cueball]] reads an historical marker celebrating the formation of the {{w\|Earth}}. As with most historical markers, it claims to rest on the exact spot of the event, that the Earth formed in this specific location. It also specifies the Earth's formation to the precise year 4.45 billion ({{w\|Long and short scales\|4,450 million}}) BCE.

@@ Line 33: / Line 33: @@
 If the precise year was knowable, the probability of the number actually ending in seven consecutive zeros would be on the order of one-in-ten-million.
-The topic of what precisely makes a planet — related to the 2006 redefinition of a planet and the subsequent reclassification of Pluto from the ninth planet from to the sun to a dwarf planet — has been covered before in [[473: Still Raw]] and referenced in other XKCD comics.
+The topic of what precisely makes a planet — related to the 2006 redefinition of a planet and the subsequent reclassification of Pluto from the solar system's ninth planet to a dwarf planet — has been covered before in [[473: Still Raw]] and referenced in other XKCD comics.
 There is some poetry in the idea that there was a precise year, some 4.45 billion years ago, that was the first true year, the first Earth orbit around the sun. By definition, the Earth is the same age as the number of Earth orbits that have ever taken place.

@@ Line 37: / Line 37: @@
 There is some poetry in the idea that there was a precise year, some 4.45 billion years ago, that was the first true year, the first Earth orbit around the sun. By definition, the Earth is the same age as the number of Earth orbits that have ever taken place.
-Note: The date shown for the formation of the Earth, 4.45 billion years ago, also differs from the commonly accepted date, [https://pubs.usgs.gov/gip/geotime/age.html 4.54 (±0.05) billion years]. The difference lies in the transposition of two digits, 5 and 4, potentially a mistake.
+Note: The date shown for the formation of the Earth, 4.45 billion years ago, also differs from the commonly accepted date, [https://pubs.usgs.gov/gip/geotime/age.html 4.54 (±0.05) billion years]. The difference lies in the transposition of two digits, 5 and 4, potentially a mistake, as is common in historical markers.
 '''#3: Historical markers typically refer to events within the past several centuries'''

@@ Line 31: / Line 31: @@
 Secondly, specifying a single year of formation BCE (Before the Common Era) is an amusingly precise choice. It takes [https://science.nasa.gov/exoplanets/how-do-planets-form/ tens or hundreds of millions of years] for a planet to form. Picking a year would require some specific definition of when a gradually-coalescing mass of proto-planet dust and gas could be considered a planet, as well as the impossible ability to determine when that mass met the definition.
-If the precise year was knowable, it’s somewhat improbable the number would end in seven consecutive zeros. As in literally a one-in-ten-million chance, ''assuming'' that the actual possible spread of years is widely enough distributed; though we do not have enough information to establish this, and the statistics for last-number(s) frequency is different from those of {{w|Benford's law|first-number frequency}}, so it might well be only one-in-a-million, thus [https://wiki.lspace.org/Million-to-one_chance far more likely].
+If the precise year was knowable, the probability of the number actually ending in seven consecutive zeros would be on the order of one-in-ten-million.
 The topic of what precisely makes a planet — related to the 2006 redefinition of a planet and the subsequent demotion of Pluto from the ninth planet from to the sun to a dwarf planet — has been covered before in [[473: Still Raw]] and referenced in other XKCD comics.