2925: Earth Formation Site

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Earth Formation Site

Title text: It's not far from the sign marking the exact latitude and longitude of the Earth's core.

Explanation

This explanation may be incomplete or incorrect: Created by A 4,450,002,024 YEAR OLD BALL OF DUST AND GAS - Please change this comment when editing this page. Do NOT delete this tag too soon. If you can address this issue, please edit the page! Thanks.

In this comic, Cueball stands in front of a sign that declares itself to be an historical location, the formation of the Earth. The absurd humor of the comic is threefold:

1. the impossibility of knowing where exactly the Earth formed.
2. the impossibly precise date
3. the frequent imprecision of historical markers

First, the Earth formed at (or near) the center of current Earth, so this sign is technically above the right spot — but since every location on Earth is above the right spot, the location of the sign is not very specific, similar to other historical markers of events - such as a famous battle — that happened over a much larger area.

Even if an omniscient observer wanted to mark the spot in space where the Earth started forming, they would have trouble due to Sun's 225-million year long orbit around the center of the Milky Way galaxy and the movement of the galaxy itself through space relative to other objects. From this perspective, the Earth’s formation did not occur anywhere on Earth.

Secondly, the date on the sign is also ridiculously precise, in keeping with the information usually found on historical markers but absurd in the context of the tens or hundreds of millions of years thought to be required for planet formation. It would require some specific definition of when the gradually-coalescing mass could be considered a planet, as well as the ability to determine when that mass met the definition. The date shown for the formation of the Earth, 4.45 billion years, also differs from the commonly accepted date, 4.54 (±0.05) billion years. The difference lies in the transposition of two digits, which is likely due to an error in the sign rather than a mistake on Randall's part.

Thirdly, this comic is also poking fun at the norms and frequent flaws of historical markers. Typically, these signs are placed at precise locations where historical, religious and even mythological events happened (such as where battles have been fought, or where people of note were born, or resided, or accomplished something, or died, or where something supposedly happened). In some cases, multiple locations lay "claim" to events whose true locations are uncertain.

The title text refers to the 'coordinates of the Earth's core'. This is similar to signs marking specific latitudes, longitudes or other notable locations. But, since all coordinates, when superimposed on a globe, theoretically converge at the Earth's core, this reinforces the idea that no singular location can be picked as the exact location where the Earth formed.

Transcript

This transcript is incomplete. Please help editing it! Thanks.

[Cueball is standing in front of a sign in a field of grass. Rocks and plants are scattered across the ground. The sign reads:]

HISTORICAL MARKER

EARTH

FORMATION SITE

--- 4,450,000,000 BCE ---

At this location in the year 4,450,000,000 BCE, a cloud of dust and gas gravitationally collapsed to form the Earth.

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Discussion

The title text is only true for geocentric latitude and longitude, not geodetic (which is what is commonly used). 172.69.58.125 18:32, 26 April 2024 (UTC)

I'm impressed that whatever distant body that sign is placed upon, has actually developed plant life. Especially since it would need to be parked in place relative to the rest of the observable cosmos, & thus seems unlikely to have a suitably close star making regular appearance overhead... ProphetZarquon (talk) 19:11, 26 April 2024 (UTC)

👍Tier666 (talk) 09:52, 28 April 2024 (UTC)

Magrathea? L-Space Traveler (talk) 14:46, 27 April 2024 (UTC)

Hi Proph! I just wanted to say that I enjoy reading your comments here and in the SMBC comment page, if you are in fact ProphetZarquon in both places. 172.70.175.28 21:46, 26 April 2024 (UTC)

If there's another Prophet Zarquon out there - wait, nope, looks like that's me, too...

ProphetZarquon (talk) 03:25, 27 April 2024 (UTC)

The spatial location of a famous person's birth is technically not where the Solar System now is, also. If you're going to be picky about that. If you do allow the Earth's worldline to be accounted for, then it's broadly true that Earth formed (looks out of window at home) here. I think the principle concern there is whether Earth formed in the collision of planets named Ear and Theia, or whether Earth was Earth before Theia came along, which either way seems to be why there is such a large Moon beside it - made of material from both of the previous planets. And it probably counts as a change of course from the previous situation, although the apparent likelihood that Theia formed in Earth's orbit in originally a Trojan relationship may bear on that - if one planet just caught up with the other in orbit, like tailgating in traffic. [email protected] 141.101.98.184 17:35, 27 April 2024 (UTC)

The ridiculously specific date may be a reference to how real historical markers frequently get dates incorrect 172.70.127.135 23:29, 26 April 2024 (UTC)

The other side of the sign says, "At this exact point in space, 13.7878693 billion years ago, the Big Bang took place." That's true of every point in space, according to the current model. The Big Bang implies that all of space was a single point, and space itself expanded outward from that point. Nitpicking (talk) 03:07, 27 April 2024 (UTC)

The explanation needs to be rewritten. It is missing the point and far to detailed for just saying: The marker could be standing at any point of earth's surface, as reinforced by the title text. The whole discussion about galaxies and solar systems moving is just a matter of the reference system and does not contribute to the understanding of the comic.--172.70.243.32 07:28, 27 April 2024 (UTC)

• I disagree. The section is saying that it could not have reasonably happened on Earth itself due to the fact the Earth and the Solar System itself move around through space. someone, i guess^{(talk i guess|le edit list)} 13:25, 27 April 2024 (UTC)

Randall was once a physicist. He's aware of the fact that there is no absolute system of measurements, and that locations on Earth are always relative to Earth coordinates, not some sort of galactic map. Nitpicking (talk) 14:10, 27 April 2024 (UTC)

Can the Earth's core even have a latitude and a longitude? Aren't those all referring to the surface? --162.158.90.198 11:47, 27 April 2024 (UTC)

You're right. That is the joke, in fact. Nitpicking (talk) 14:10, 27 April 2024 (UTC)

Well, 162.158... is 'right' except that you can indeed have a latitute, longitude and also altitude/depth on top, not just restricting yourself to the surface (or Mean Sea Level or whatever other geometric surface you consider as your default).

As to whether the (centre of the) core can have latitude and longitude, it's a very similar argument as that of whether the (coordinate) poles can have longitudes as well as ±90° latitude.

If you are asking what either pole's longitude is, it would depend upon the what the algorthm was specified (or fails to have been) for the situation, as you could be told 'undefined', 'NaN', given a placeholder constant (e.g. zero), an effectively random value, a value determinate upon what led to this (you were at <location>, 10 miles south of the north pole, and modified that by 10 miles direct northwards travel, so maintain the same longitude as <location> had), a value that would normally be out of range (e.g. for silently passing on, to do the error-catching/checking later on) or several other options.

If you're specifiying the longitude of a pole (for use in an onward algorithm) then it may well (or may not!) be possible to provide any/all of these, but perhaps ultimately ignored/chucked away as meaningless. (Unless you have it doing something like "go ten miles south from north pole, what's the <location> now?", intentionally or otherwise disambiguating via the 'arbitrary but definite' polar longitude.)

So, similarly, if you're asking "What lat/long is the location of the core", the chances are that you're going to get to go through a different manner of deriving a result from that of requesting information such as "This is my lat/long. Is this (above) where the core is?".

...though, yes, this still is very much the joke. Including all the ambiguity as to the rationale involved in however it apparently became disambiguated. 172.69.195.122 21:59, 27 April 2024 (UTC)