stn@u.washington.edu

Footnotes

In which John explores further all those tangents that divert him in his lectures ...

* Time is what stops everything happening all at once

I think this comes from one of the Hitchhiker books by Douglas Adams. You know: "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy", "The Restaurant at the End of the Universe", etc. And, of course, the fourth book in the Hitchhiker Trilogy, "So Long, and Thanks for all the Fish". Something like it appears, unattributed, in the WikiQuotes entry on "time".

It was Einstein who said "Time is an illusion". It was Douglas Adams who said "Time is an illusion, lunchtime doubly so". It was Groucho Marx who said "Time flies like an arrow, fruit flies like a banana".

* A few and quite well known observations on the science of geochronology ...

The real quote comes from John Lightfoot, a 17th century biblical scholar. In 1647 he published an account of the creation entitled "A few, and New Observations upon the Book of Genesis. The Most of them Certain, the rest Probable, all Harmless, Strange and rarely heard of before." It is Lightfoot's chronology, not the better known version due to Bishop Ussher, which placed creation at nine o'clock in the morning. Lightfoot dated the creation to the autumnal equinox, 3928 BC. Ussher favoured the evening of October 22nd, 4004 BC.

Chart of the Nuclides

Everyone wants a Chart of the Nuclides, right? You can buy one, either as a big colorful poster (impress your dorm friends ...) or a handy reference book. Either version costs $25.00 from chartofthenuclides.com. Of course there are free, interactive versions on the web. The best two that I've come across are from: the Korean Atomic Energy Research Institute (KAERI) and Brookhaven National Lab. For the Brookhaven chart you need to zoom in to level 1 to see the familiar isotopic abundances, decay modes, etc.