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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 BLUE PLAQUE COMMITTEE - Please change this comment when editing this page. Do NOT delete this tag too soon. |
In this comic, Cueball stands in front of a sign that declares itself to be a historical location. Typically, these signs are placed at precise locations where historical events happened (such as where battles have been fought, or where people of note were born, or resided, or accomplished something, or died). However, the event in question on the sign is the formation of the Earth, which cannot be pinned down to one precise location on Earth, and therefore this sign could be placed just as well anywhere on Earth.
It may also be of interest to note that due to the Sun's 225-million year long orbit around the center of the Milky Way galaxy, the sign is misleading, as the exact location at the time of formation within the galaxy is unclear.
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.
The title text refers to the 'coordinates of the Earth's core'. Since all coordinates, when superimposed on a globe, 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. 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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