A little bit of science-y whimsy

[Garwulf]

Hi all!

I'm probably fighting off a minor cold, which means I'm feeling on the run down side. So, I figured if I'm not going to be productive anyway, I'd share something just plain cool (in a science-y way).

Yesterday morning, my wife and I went to a rock and mineral show, and we bought a couple of fossils. She got a Jurassic-era ammonite, and I got a 412 million year old trilobite.

It may just be an accident of fossilization (this particular trilobite was broken in half during the process, and had to be glued back together during restoration), but my trilobite has a very lively pose. It is rearing up and to the side, as though caught in the middle of a turn. It is about two and a half inches long, and its tail curls down at the back.

Where this gets sort of cool - besides the fact that if you actually start trying to wrap your brain around "412 million years old" it promptly melts - is that if you think about it, this isn't even the original trilobite. The original trilobite is long gone, replaced by minerals during fossilization. This is the ghost of a little sea creature that lived entire geological ages before the Dinosaurs.

I just thought that was cool and worth sharing (particularly after LRRchat yesterday pointed out that we had inadvertently bought the Helix and Dome fossils, bringing our Twitch Plays Pokemon fandom to new levels...but that's a side note...)

[Lord Chrusher]

Pff, 400 million years ago is quite recent in astronomical terms.

I almost never think about how large the quantities I deal with in astronomy are in human terms. This is especially true if you use logarithmic scales. If you think of the masses of star cluster of being between 2.4 and 6.3 it is much easier to wrap your head around than thinking of the masses being between 460 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 kg and 4 300 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 kg.

[My pseudonym is Ix]

Trilobites are pretty well-represented in the fossil record and are often shown in rather distorted shapes- one presumes that various geological forces contort their bodies as they are buried prior to fossilisation. I wonder how representative this motion is of what they were capable of when alive.

[NebulosDisconcertion]

This is my great(1.4x10^7) grandfather's trilobite.
{My great((1.4x10^7)-X) grandfather replaced carbon with silica.
X++
do while 'great>0'}
And my grandfather replaced carbon with silica. And my father replaced carbon with silica.
Is it really my great(1.4x10^7) grandfather's trilobite?


I really want to look up/remember proper code syntax and find out how I depicted fossilization incorrectly, but that is the kind of crazy I'm trying not to be right now.