Charlie StrossAug 24, 2024
An un-noted cause of death up to about t minus 2GYa is "smashed to death on the rocks by the incoming tide"—when the Moon formed it orbited about 30,000km up with a period of a few hours and the Earth's day was under 6 hours, leading to hundred metre high tides sweeping round the planet every few hours. (Tidal drag gradually lengthened the day and widened the Moon's orbit to their current duration/radius.)
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Attached: 1 image xkcd Aug 23, 2024 - ""Time Traveler Causes of Death" Title text: Many a hungry time traveler has Googled 'trilobites shellfish allergy' only to find their carrier had no coverage in the Ordovician. Most of the causes are well understood based on the history of earth. The title text implies that in the Ordovician era, instead of getting eaten by monstrous fishes, our intrepid time traveler might die from eating trilobites that causes a shellfish allergy reaction. https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php/2976:_Time_Traveler_Causes_of_Death 1/n

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Show threadMedea Vanamonde🏳️‍⚧️ ♀Aug 24, 2024
@cstross I’ve been binge watching “How The Universe Works” which I snark about being “Astronomy Porn” but at least 1/4 of the entire series is a four the formation of the Earth and the birth of the Moon.
Often I Wil just close my eyes and listen to the narration or listen to @badastro and other Astronomers, Astrophysicists, Astrobiologists cosmologists etc etc talk about the subjects in an informal very Cosey setting or out amongst nature .
Say…don’t you have a novella that covers the life of Earth from beginning to end and beyond?
Show threadCharlie Stross
@MishaVanMollusq @badastro Yup: "Palimpsest", collected in "Wireless" (won 2010 Hugo for best novella). I think I missed out the megatides, though.
Aug 24, 2024 at 2:23pmWeb
Show threadMedea Vanamonde🏳️‍⚧️ ♀Aug 24, 2024

@cstross @badastro ifs been like a decade since I read that .
I remember a Passage that had a THE STASIS station in the Precambrian and they were using a wormhole relay to do some kind of data processing or did I dream that…
Diamond Earth further up-when toward Terminus was intriguing .

So…and episode I caught yesterday had a stunning revelation that Major Chunks of Thea are still indivisible inside the earth and that they wrap the core like a pair of hands making it spin faster and giving us that protective magnetic field .

You know …there needs to be a radio program like How The Universe Works that is both exciting and engaging and tricks one into leaning updated facts about this Universe.