Gigayear - Sixty Symbols

[ClamCrunchy]

There are 1.21 Niggawatts of energy at the Apollo theater.

[giftlftr2385]

Aeon?

[MrJarth]

me-gay-ear

[THEGAMINGRULER]

human cant invision what a giga year is ? hell no we cant even invion what a year is simply because years mean different to us at different ages like im 14 a year is 1/14 of my like for a two year old a year is 1/2 of his life and for an 80 year old 1/80th so we dont have a standard unit of feeling (if u know what i mean) for a year lol its incredible how dont even think about this stuff

[husnainanwaar1992]

kilayear magayear gigayear tarayear

[omnipotente666]

in spanish a billion are one million of millons, and a trillion are 1 million of million of millions, so for the americans a billion are one thousend millions and 1 million of milions are a trillion... lets stick to the latin and all that giga stuff ....

[Tridecalogism]

1.21 GIGAWATTS!

[CuanL]

As geologists we tend to use Ga or Ma (anum instead of year). But that did confuse my third year physics prof. when I used it initially :P

[Blacksun777]

well, actually I don't get what is so special about a Gyr. Because it's just 10^9 years, it's like 10^12 Byte or Tera Byte. Even if you say Giga year, it is sill not easycomparable. PS: I'm 0.678 Gsec old.

[Metallosaurus]

@Blacksun777 Think of it this way: Imagine you're going out and waiting for someone and he/she is late. Waiting for an hour seems very tedious and it seems like an eternity right? Now imagine waiting for a Gyr...

Yeah.

[HomeDistiller]

so that makes me 0.000000029 Gyr :) i feel damn young now :)

[madzyadzy07]

Preeetty sure the snail would have died first :P

[strangerlover11]

how these stupid knows how old is universal only imaginations idiots even if some

bring week old shit infront of them and ask them how old it there answer will be the

same about million year old than other will jump no 2 million...hahahhahah

[TheRimDoctor]

@strangerlover11

What?

[Spoookyfred]

@TheRimDoctor

Described my thoughts exactly.

[bogieman987]

So we haven't even reached a single "Tera Year" lol

[Mojosbigstick]

If the sun lasts for 10 gyr, and the earth is 5 gyr old, that means the earth is now middle-aged.

Is humanity just the earth's mid-life crisis?

[tehinCOREuptable]

Near the end, at 3:50- 3:54 the guy says that a Megayear is 10 to the 6. You might want to put an annotation to clear it up that that means 10^6 and not 10x10^6, because that's a difference of 9 Megayears and I know many people who instead of saying, "Times ten to the x" will just say "[number] to the x" but mean "ten to the x". Just don't want anyone to be confused, even though it's right there :P

[SOLUuser1010]

if ive worked this out correctly, a gigayear is worth 36535000000000000000 days

if you want to check:

1billion x 0.75 to get all the non-leap years. that times by 365

+

1 billion x0.25 for all theleap years, that times by 366

if i am wrong please give me the correct equation

[Direkin]

@kristijanadrian Er? Only metres? Not quite. The choice of units depends on the application. When measuring distances within the (or rather any) solar system you would use astronomical units, and outside the solar system you would use parsecs; metres would be a pretty poor choice in both cases.

[NoHanguk]

The guy at 1:06 talks like Kurt from Glee.

[iSynOSX]

ok so when you say year are you referring to the 365Day Year we experience on earth or another type of year. Since we are talking about the universe and Time through out the universe isn't defined the same way. I mean I get what is being said, a gigayear is a long time but when you think of time we just associate it with the time we experience on earth, but Time in the universe is vastly different in the context of time.

[Direkin]

@iSynOSX True to some degree, but since we experience time only here on Earth, we have no other frame of reference to use.

[jacksawild]

When the snail finishes it's going to be pretty pissed off with the scientists.

[ovio707]

so it takes a snail 100 years to go around once?

[ironclad452]

13.7 gigayears. Not 13.8 or a nice round 14 ... precisely 13.7 gigayears.

Believe it!  They're scientists.

[3doog]

I'm half a Gigasecond old

[culwin]

Giga thumbs up

[747Jamesbond]

@culwin what a nerdy comment no offence.

[4jonah]

do astronomers use mega and tera years?

[4jonah]

@4jonah

never mind

[FeynmanMH42]

@4jonah Megayears, yes. Terayears, they may very occasionally use when talking about the future of the Universe - remember the Universe is only 13.7 Gigayears old, so...

[fugehdehyou]

@FeynmanMH42 like my hard drive its one terabyte :)

[avecesdeunhilo]

5 *

oh wait, lets just say i liked it

[SubduedToSilence]

I thought a billion was a million million not a thousand million?

[superdau]

@SubduedToSilence

That's exactly why there are these prefixes. A billion is different in different languages, giga is not.

(American) English counts: million -> billion -> trillion... for every x1000

German (as does French) has Million -> Milliarde -> Billion -> Billiarde -> Trillion. So a "Billion" in german is a trillion in english (which causes many errors in news and even popular science mags).

British English has afaik (I'm not a native speaker) both, but mostly uses the AE meanings.

[Kurtlane]

Yes, and in Russian it's Million -> Milliarde -> Billion -> Trillion. "Billiarde" means "pool table."

[gfdriver]

@superdau they mostly use the american usage. not because our version is "superior" or anything, but just for standardization it makes sense to go with what more people are using (when there isn't any real difference, anyway)

[DeRex9]

@superdau So, in Japanese that would translate to Godzillion years, Ain't ? ;)

[DannyNHansen]

@superdau We do that in Danish too (talking about German and French). It's really quite confusing sometimes when watching videos like these (or even reading it on paper), because you immediately think, "Billion, that's 10^12," which is what a billion would be in Danish. Honestly, I think the American approach makes the most sense, especially in terms of consistency and understanding. I wish we used that as well. I do think it's very good we have the prefixes, though. Much easier to understand.

[JustJobeMY]

@SubduedToSilence no mate, thats a trillion i think

[MaBuSt]

i presume supersdau clarified?

[airihi]

It seems like the wrong unit if your figures are more precise - I get the sense that with "only" a max of 14, you'd spill down into points and point zeros of a giga year a lot, almost begging to use hundreds and tens of mega years.

Is there a unit that is to mega and giga, what centi is to milli and meter?

(BTW it might just be me but the internal rhyme and alliterative feature in that last sentence almost seems to beg to start a dirty poem about planks(') lengths...;)

[ASKaPHYSICIST]

That's not really natural units is it?

Why don't you measure in Hubble times?

[zageiger]

We should just use scientific prefixes when talking about money. Then maybe we'd see that numbers relating to the economy are not astronomically high, but rather numbers in astronomy are economically high.

[clarkcolt45]

I always give my age in milliseconds what's wrong with that!?!? :/

[Films4You]

Far off=Gigalightyear

[ImposingSumo]

I heard someone say once that human perspective is logarithmically and chronologically equidistant from the micro and macro scales. Quite a neat way of looking at things...

[paronfisk]

1,21 gigayear?

[T1carus]

universe is as old as time, it just gets infinatly bigger so looking back it gets inversely infinately smaller

[henry7515]

like i said, this is pure cracker bizness

[glenwoofit]

A snail could never live that long! And would have a very sore foot afterwards! lol

[Sutskoen]

@glenwoofit it doesn't have feet either ;)

[Films4You]

@glenwoofit Very funny, poor snail, is it Edible after this.

[LordNapalm]

I don't understand why giga is easier to comprehend than billion.

Seems a bit silly to me.

[andy16666]

@LordNapalm It's not easier to understand...it's just easier to write. :-P You know about metric units and scientific notation don't you? Well it's the same idea.

[LordNapalm]

@andy16666 If it's just about being easier to write.. then you should just use notation.. or maybe "B" for billion.

[polyatheist]

@LordNapalm

Since you're writing here, you're using a computer. A computer which likely has gigabytes of RAM, terabytes of harddisk space, is connected to the net with a megabit/s connection. You take your photos with a megapixel camera with milliseconds exposure time. You're using it all the time already.

btw. in many languages (e.g. german and french) a "billion" is actually an english trillion, which leads to many mistranslations. "giga" is unambiguous.

[andy16666]

@LordNapalm The notation is G, like gigabyte, or gigameter or gigalitre. It's a standard prefix that most of the English speaking world learns in elementary school. I have no idea why you wouldn't already be familiar with it, unless maybe you're American or you dropped out in grade 3.

[LinkStrikesBack]

@LordNapalm Why use B for billion, B has several other connotations in physics, including being the symbol for several different units, with at least two of them being important in astronomy, when we have a complete set of universally understood (by physicists and other scientists anyway) set of standard form prefixes that are simpler to use, here being Gigayears (Actually scientifically known as a Giga annum) or Ga?

Ga being the notation of gigaannum, of course.

[K2Tanner]

@LordNapalm

Not everyone speaks english or understands the b standing for billion. Giga is a universally recognized prefix for 10^9

[Kargoneth]

I cannot conceive of these lengths of time... which may explain why creationists mock evolution. They do not understand how much time is involved in going from a protocell to a human being.

[jnthnbush]

@Kargoneth in a creation vs evolution argument I like to extrapolate the available evolutionary time to generations of life or amount of time the DNA has regenerated. With that, you get a much bigger number with trillions of generations and trillions of mutation and natural selection instances since the first protocells to human.

[Kargoneth]

@jnthnbush Interesting thought. I may have to try that when other methods fail.

[lejink]

829,724,876 seconds and counting

[polyatheist]

Units that don't appear in daily life are a funny thing. One of my hobbies is electronics, where things can happen on the scale of nanoseconds. After programming microcontrollers with this scale in mind even microseconds start to feel long! Seems to work the other way round, too. What's a million years? Nothing!

The same happens with pressure and temperature: once you dealt with pressures lower than on Pluto and measure temperature in Kelvin only, you get a whole new perspective of nature!

[TeoTheAwesome]

what a coincidence, the "10 giga yeay simulation" on the right was posted exacty 1 year ago, on the 19th of April 2009....

[Armzan]

1billion years is way to big for me to comprehend :P

how do we know how old the earth is?

[lynchmobb2000]

@Armzan

We know how old the earth is basically because of radiometric dating. Certain isotopes decay at known rates so if we look at old rocks to see how much of the substance has decayed, it's very simple to calculate the age of the rock. And the oldest rocks date to ~4.6 billion years ago.

Cheers

[Armzan]

@lynchmobb2000 sounds confusing :)

[krypekeeper]

@Armzan carbon dating

[polyatheist]

@krypekeeper

couldn't be wronger. That's the way creationists try to show the earth is young: by carbon dating stones, which of course gives arbitrary results, because "there's no f**ng carbon in it" (copyright potholer54 ;-) ). It only works for things that lived and breathed air in the last 50.000 years (does NOT work for aquatic life). More info there: /watch?v=QbvMB57evy4

Btw. for stones you use potassiumargon dating (among others).

[krypekeeper]

@polyatheist are u one of those people who think the earth is 6,000 years old?

[polyatheist]

@krypekeeper

Have you read my comment? I don't know how you could come to this conclusion...

[boombruv]

interesting