5 ms·

I've heard this fact phrased as "the time between the construction of the pyramids and 0 AD is more than the time from 0 AD to present day" which blows my mind

by sxp 6y ago

I've heard this fact phrased as "the time between the construction of the pyramids and 0 AD is more than the time from 0 AD to present day" which blows my mind every time I think of it.

perl4ever 6y ago
Conversely, the original IBM PC was closer in time to WWII than to now. And the discovery of quantum mechanics was closer to the war of 1812 than to now.
- redis_mlc 6y ago
  And it's been almost 100 years since the first patent (1934) on maglev trains, as built in 2002 in Shangai. That's why lay people wonder about not seeing scientific progress since the 70s or 80s - it seems like decades since giant steps were made. But incremental progress adds up, too. One day we'll merge all those low-temperature superconductor or graphene experiments into something bigger. And there's been a bunch of nice proofs coming from random places annually. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maglev#First_maglev_patent https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maglev#First_maglev_patent
Mirioron 6y ago
There's this idea that we should add 10000 years to our calendar. It's called the Holocene calendar.[0] The argument for using a calendar like this is that it would make it easier to understand historical dating and it would roughly align with the appearance of the first settlements. The Holocene epoch started at about 9700 BC. This would be around year 300 on this calendar ("of the human era"). If we used this calendar then the current year would be 12020. Cleopatra died in 9971. The Great Pyramid at Giza was finished around the year 7441. Alaric's sack of Rome would've been in the year 10410. Note that the reason events from the BCE time have a 1 at the end is because our current calendar does not have the year 0. It goes from 1 BC to 1 AD. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holocene_calendar https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holocene_calendar

by sxp 6y ago

I've heard this fact phrased as "the time between the construction of the pyramids and 0 AD is more than the time from 0 AD to present day" which blows my mind every time I think of it.

perl4ever 6y ago

Conversely, the original IBM PC was closer in time to WWII than to now. And the discovery of quantum mechanics was closer to the war of 1812 than to now.

redis_mlc 6y ago
And it's been almost 100 years since the first patent (1934) on maglev trains, as built in 2002 in Shangai. That's why lay people wonder about not seeing scientific progress since the 70s or 80s - it seems like decades since giant steps were made. But incremental progress adds up, too. One day we'll merge all those low-temperature superconductor or graphene experiments into something bigger. And there's been a bunch of nice proofs coming from random places annually. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maglev#First_maglev_patent https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maglev#First_maglev_patent

Mirioron 6y ago

There's this idea that we should add 10000 years to our calendar. It's called the Holocene calendar.[0] The argument for using a calendar like this is that it would make it easier to understand historical dating and it would roughly align with the appearance of the first settlements. The Holocene epoch started at about 9700 BC. This would be around year 300 on this calendar ("of the human era"). If we used this calendar then the current year would be 12020. Cleopatra died in 9971. The Great Pyramid at Giza was finished around the year 7441. Alaric's sack of Rome would've been in the year 10410. Note that the reason events from the BCE time have a 1 at the end is because our current calendar does not have the year 0. It goes from 1 BC to 1 AD. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holocene_calendar https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holocene_calendar