Older Earth

Researchers Change Opinion on Earth's Age

The Earth became a major planetary body much earlier than previously believed, just 10 million years after the birth of the sun, researchers say.

Experts now believe that the inner solar system planets — Mercury, Venus, Earth and Mars — actually began forming within 10,000 years after the nuclear fires of the sun were ignited about 4.5 billion years ago, says Stein B. Jacobsen, author of an analysis appearing Friday in the journal Science.

Early in its life, the sun was surrounded by clouds of dust and gas. This material slowly clumped together into larger and larger pieces. Eventually, enough was concentrated in four bodies to form the inner solar system planets.

Within 10 million years, the Earth had reached about 64 percent of its present size and was the dominant planetary body within 93 million miles of the sun. Mercury and Venus orbit closer to the sun and Mars is farther out.

The final major event in the formation of the Earth, says Jacobsen, was probably the collision with a Mars-sized planetary body. This huge smashup added many millions of tons of material to the Earth. Some material also went into orbit of the Earth and evolved into the moon.

This massive collision, the final major event in the Earth's formation, is thought to have happened about 30 million years after the sun was born.

An earlier analysis of some chemical isotopes in the Earth's crust had concluded that the planet formed about 50 million years after the sun. But Jacobsen said a reinterpretation of the data, along with new measurements of chemicals in some types of meteorites, supports the conclusion that Earth's basic formation came much earlier.

Must ... feed ... growing boy....

Even Before Birth, Boys Demand More Than Girls

Swedish and American researchers have solved the puzzle of why baby boys are so much bigger at birth than girls -- their mothers eat more during pregnancy.

Women carrying male embryos consume about 10 percent more calories, eight percent more protein and have a higher intake of carbohydrates and animal and vegetable fats, according to research published on Friday.

"It is widely accepted that on average newborn boys are heavier than newborn girls. The findings give us a better understanding of why that is the case," said Rulla Tamimi, an epidemiologist at the Harvard School of Public Health.

Tamimi and colleagues at Harvard and the Karolinska Institute in Sweden studied the diets of 244 American women during their second trimester of pregnancy. They believe women carrying boys eat more because they have a higher energy requirement, which could be due to testosterone secreted by the fetal testicles.

But although they produce bigger babies, mothers of boys do not put on more weight than other women during pregnancy because the gender of the baby had no effect on maternal weight.

"These data suggest that in utero boys are already more demanding than girls," said Harvard's Dimitrios Trichopoulos, a co-author of the study published in The British Medical Journal.

(no subject)

So the place where I'm temping has called me back for the second full week. This is good, though I miss sleep. (In fact, I missed sleep so much that, were it not for my father, I would have slept in today by mistake.) They apparently like me, but they really need me--the office (a leasing office for a very large apartment community) is incredibly busy, and the staff is happy to have a temp who works hard with little supervision. I even ask for more work to do when I'm done.

I haven't been able to work much on new poems, but I have been reading here and there, which is good. I've read more Stevens, and I introduced myself to the works of Billy Collins (who was the national Poet Laureate from 2001-02). His lyricism is clear and lovely; I really like his style. I'll have to read more of his earlier work. (I read Sailing Alone Around the Room, his collected poems, published in 2001.)

In the meanwhile, I'll post a poem by Stevens, printed in 1936, in Ideas of Order.

Ghosts as Cocoons, by Wallace Stevens

The grass is in seed. The young birds are flying.
Yet the house is not built, not even begun.

The vetch has turned purple. But where is the bride?
It is easy to say to those bidden--But where,

Where, butcher, seducer, bloodman, reveller,
Where is the sun and music and highest heaven's lust?

For which more than any words cries deeplier?
This mangled, smutted semi-world hacked out

Of dirt . . . It is not possible for the moon
To blot this with its dove-winged blendings,

She must come now. The grass is in seed and high.
Come now. Those to be born have need

Of the bride, love being a birth, have need to see
And to touch her, have need to say to her,

"The fly on the rose prevents us, O season
Excelling in summer, ghost of fragrance falling

On dung." Come now, pearled and pasted, bloomy-leafed,
While the domes resound with chant involving chant.

Words and their rapid evolution....

'Bling-Bling' Makes New Oxford Dictionary

Khazi, minging, bling-bling? Not some crazy new dialect, but standard British vocabulary, according to the latest edition of the Oxford English Dictionary, published Friday.

The publishers said they have added almost 6,000 new words and phrases that reflect 21st century life, including the frowner's favorite, Botox, passion-enhancing drug Viagra and sambuca, the aniseed liqueur served with a flaming coffee bean.

Among the 187,000 definitions in the latest edition, published by Oxford University Press, there is also bevvy — British slang for a beer; head-case, referring to a person who exhibits irrational behavior; and bling-bling, a reference to elaborate jewelry and clothing, and the appreciation of it.

Half-inch, Cockney rhyming slang for pinch, or steal, also makes it into the dictionary this time around.

Some of the new terms, including cut-and-paste, screensavers and search engines, reflect the growing influence of computers, while hands-free phones and phreaking, the expression for hacking into phone systems for free calls, acknowledge developments in telecommunications.

Other corporate-speak considered established enough for inclusion in the dictionary includes dot-coms, or Internet companies, and blipverts, subliminal TV adverts of just a few seconds' duration.

And J.R.R. Tolkien's fictional world in "The Lord of the Rings" is also recognized. Orcs are defined as "members of an imaginary race of ugly, aggressive human-like creatures." The dictionary says the word probably comes from the Latin orcus meaning hell, or the Italian orco, meaning monster.

Getting down to basics, the new dictionary now makes it all right to describe the khazi (toilet) as minging (disgusting).