[meteorite-list] Fw: term definitions and usage

[Randy Korotev]

I attended my first scientific conference as a graduate student 
sometime in the early 70's.  My first exposure to lunar geochronology 
was a session I attended at that conference.  I was surprised to 
learn that the community of isotope geochronologists was very 
contentious to the point of being insulting and rude.  After nearly 
every talk somebody got up and asked a pointed question or made a 
damning comment.

After one talk someone in the audience got up and chastised the 
speaker for having presented all his age data with the units 
"byr."  The chastiser was very adamant that "billion years" was an 
obsolete and a just-plain-wrong term, in part because the word 
billion means a different things in America and Britain.  "The proper 
term is Ga for gigaannum (you idiot)!"

The next speaker got up and started his talk like this: "A nano 
gigaannum ago at this conference we presented some data..."  It took 
almost until the end of the sentence for the audience to appreciate 
the joke and erupt into laughter.

Randy Korotev