One way or another, in my Everyday life we measure distances: to the nearest supermarket, to a relative’s house in another city, to and so on. However, when it comes to the vastness of outer space, it turns out that using familiar values ​​like kilometers is extremely irrational. And the point here is not only in the difficulty of perceiving the resulting gigantic values, but in the number of numbers in them. Even writing so many zeros will become a problem. For example, the shortest distance from Mars to Earth is 55.7 million kilometers. Six zeros! But the red planet is one of our closest neighbors in the sky. How to use the cumbersome numbers that result when calculating the distance even to the nearest stars? And it is now that we need such a value as a light year. How much is it equal? Let's figure it out now.

The concept of a light year is also closely related to relativistic physics, in which the close connection and mutual dependence of space and time was established at the beginning of the 20th century, when the postulates of Newtonian mechanics collapsed. Before this distance value, larger scale units in the system

were formed quite simply: each subsequent one was a collection of units of a smaller order (centimeters, meters, kilometers, and so on). In the case of a light year, distance was tied to time. Modern science knows that the speed of light propagation in a vacuum is constant. Moreover, she is maximum speed in nature, acceptable in modern relativistic physics. It was these ideas that formed the basis of the new meaning. A light year is equal to the distance a ray of light travels in one Earth calendar year. In kilometers it is approximately 9.46 * 10 15 kilometers. Interestingly, a photon travels the distance to the nearest Moon in 1.3 seconds. It's about eight minutes to the sun. But the next closest stars, Alpha, are already about four light years away.

Just a fantastic distance. There is an even larger measure of space in astrophysics. A light year is equal to about one-third of a parsec, an even larger unit of measurement for interstellar distances.

Speed ​​of light propagation under different conditions

By the way, there is also such a feature that photons can propagate at different speeds in different environments. We already know how fast they fly in a vacuum. And when they say that a light year is equal to the distance covered by light in a year, they mean empty outer space. However, it is interesting to note that under other conditions the speed of light may be lower. For example, in air, photons scatter at a slightly lower speed than in vacuum. Which one depends on the specific state of the atmosphere. Thus, in a gas-filled environment, the light year would be somewhat smaller. However, it would not differ significantly from the accepted one.

An extra-system unit of length used in astronomy; 1 S.g. is equal to the distance traveled by light in 1 year. 1 S. g. = 0.3068 parsec = 9.4605 1015 m. Physical encyclopedic dictionary. M.: Soviet encyclopedia. Chief Editor A. M. Prokhorov... ... Physical encyclopedia

LIGHT YEAR, a unit of astronomical distance equal to the distance that light travels in outer space or in a VACUUM in one tropical year. One light year is equal to 9.46071012 km... Scientific and technical encyclopedic dictionary

LIGHT YEAR, a unit of length used in astronomy: the path traveled by light in 1 year, i.e. 9.466?1012 km. The distance to the nearest star (Proxima Centauri) is approximately 4.3 light years. The most distant stars in the Galaxy are located on... ... Modern encyclopedia

Unit of interstellar distances; the path that light travels in a year, i.e. 9.46? 1012 km... Big Encyclopedic Dictionary

Light year- LIGHT YEAR, a unit of length used in astronomy: the path traveled by light in 1 year, i.e. 9.466´1012 km. The distance to the nearest star (Proxima Centauri) is approximately 4.3 light years. The most distant stars in the Galaxy are located on... ... Illustrated Encyclopedic Dictionary

An extra-system unit of length used in astronomy. 1 light year is the distance that light travels in 1 year. 1 light year is equal to 9.4605E+12 km = 0.307 pc... Astronomical Dictionary

Unit of interstellar distances; the path that light travels in a year, that is, 9.46·1012 km. * * * LIGHT YEAR LIGHT YEAR, a unit of interstellar distances; the path that light travels in a year, i.e. 9.46×1012 km... encyclopedic Dictionary

Light year- a unit of distance equal to the path traveled by light in one year. A light year is equal to 0.3 parsecs... Concepts of modern natural science. Glossary of basic terms

light year- šviesmetis statusas T sritis Standartizacija ir metrologija apibrėžtis Astronominis ilgio matavimo vienetas, lygus nuotoliui, kurį vakuume nusklinda šviesa per 1 atogrąžinius metus. Žymimas šm: 1 šm = 9.46073 · 10¹² km. atitikmenys: engl. light... ... Penkiakalbis aiškinamasis metrologijos terminų žodynas

light year- šviesmetis statusas T sritis fizika atitikmenys: engl. light year vok. Lichtjahr, n rus. light year, m pranc. année lumière, f … Fizikos terminų žodynas

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We are unlikely to ever be able to answer this question accurately. For a long time, people have been interested in the question: “How old is the Earth?” The answers to this question have come to us in the form of myths, legends, and traditions. From a scientific point of view, scientists began to look for an answer a little more than four hundred years ago, when the heliocentric theory of the existence of the Solar system appeared and began to strengthen. To find out how old planet Earth is, you first had to answer the question: “How was the solar system formed, of which our planet Earth is considered one of the elements?” It is the third planet from the Sun. Currently, the most famous are two hypotheses for the appearance of the Sun and planets, which can tell us how old the Earth is .

The first, called the nebular hypothesis, states that before the formation of the solar system, there was a gigantic hot gas cloud in space, which decreased in size, throwing out huge clumps of gas. The gas cloud, decreasing in size, turned into the Sun, and huge clumps of gas, concentrating, turned into planets, one of which became our Earth.

Another theory, which also tried to clarify the question of how old the Earth is, is called planetesimal. According to this theory, before the appearance of the Sun and Earth, there were huge clusters of relatively small-sized, relatively solid bodies in space, which scientists call planetesimals, and the Sun was in the middle of this mass. When I flew near this cluster of bodies big star, parts of this mass were torn off by the action of a massive star. These parts, in turn, began to attract small planetesimals. It's like how snow sticks to a big snowball in winter. So, according to this theory, planets appeared, and our Earth was among them.

We do not know which of these two theories is more correct, but regardless of this, astronomers, answering the question of how old the Earth is, calculated that it is approximately five and a half billion years old. But in science it is so accepted that in order to consider information true, confirmation from other sources is necessary. More accurate information was obtained using the radiometry method. According to these data, the age of the Earth was established as 4.54 billion years ±1%. As a result and the development of radiometric methods, it turned out that some mineral samples on Earth are more than one billion years old. Zircon crystals were found in Australia, the age of which was determined using this method and it turned out to be approximately 4 billion 404 million years! Based on these facts, as well as taking into account the mass and luminosity of the Sun and other stars, scientists have come to the conclusion that the age of the Solar System and, accordingly, the Earth cannot be much greater than the age of these crystals.

Meteorites contain nodules with a high content of calcium and aluminum. These are the oldest samples known to science formed in the solar system. Scientists estimate their age as 4.567 billion years. This will be the upper limit, which will help us answer the question of how old the Earth is.

Scientists suggest that approximately ten million years after the appearance of planet Earth, it acquired its own satellite - the Moon, which began to revolve around the Earth and at the same time influence the seas and oceans, the speed of rotation of our planet. At the same time, the tilt of the Earth's axis became constant.

Over the billions of years of existence, it has changed significantly, including due to the fall of meteorites, the largest of which could influence climate change on the planet, leading to the formation of lakes, islands and seas.

What is the age of planet Earth?.. Who gives the correct answer to this question - creationists, who, based on Old Testament give our planet only six thousand years, or do modern geologists count it as many as four and a half billion years old?.. How accurate is the geochronological scale and absolute dating methods?..

Analysis of these issues in the light of the data accumulated by modern science leads to the idea of ​​the need to move to a fundamentally new concept of geological history and revise absolutely all available results of stratigraphy, paleontology and geochronology. Within the framework of this concept, the history of the Earth is significantly reduced, although it does not descend to the biblical version.

Note:

Book title"Sensational history of the Earth”given by the publishing house “Veche”. In the author’s version, the book had a much more modest title “How old is planet Earth?..”

From the author

If ten years ago someone had said that I would take up writing this book, I would have at least shrugged my shoulders in surprise, since I was never seriously interested in geology, geophysics, biology, paleontology, and indeed, perhaps, none of the sciences that in one way or another relate to the issues of the formation and development of the Earth specifically as a planet. If I showed any interest in them, it was rather contemplative and curious and was supported only by the desire to be at least superficially familiar with how modern science imagines the world in which we live.

Therefore, it cannot be said that this book was the fruit of any many years of reflection on the topic of the history of the planet Earth, although individual parts included in the material presented below were written up and published as Internet articles even ten years ago, or even more. . The origins go even further into the past - to the very beginning of the 80s of the twentieth century. It was then that I, still a student at the Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology, came across an article in the popular magazine “Knowledge is Power” that discussed different models development of the Earth. This includes a theory according to which our planet has seriously changed in size over the course of its history.

Yesterday's schoolchild, brought up in the spirit of the Soviet education system, according to which everything discovered in science is an “irrefutable truth” (alas, this ideology still dominates in our society), in addition, already quite familiar with the hypothesis of continental drift and the theory of plate tectonics, and also the theory of the origin and development of the planets of the solar system in the form in which it was then presented (and is still presented) in textbooks, such an idea - the idea of ​​​​a “growing” Earth - naturally, at first seemed like complete nonsense.

In addition, the subjective factor clearly had an impact: after all, we live on the “solid” Earth and do not feel any change in its size. Try to convey to a person who is completely unfamiliar with the heliocentric system and who watches the movement of the Sun across the sky every day that it is the Earth that revolves around the Sun, and not the Sun around the Earth. This will not be so easy, since all his daily experience shows exactly the opposite.

Firstly, the magazine “Knowledge is Power,” despite the popularity of its format, at that time was famous for publishing in an accessible form materials that were called “at the cutting edge of science.”

Secondly, the theory of the “growing” Earth, presented in brief form, had its own internal logic and did not contain any obvious contradictions. And this is a fairly clear indicator that the theory may turn out to be correct, no matter how “strange” it may look.

And thirdly, after all, I was no longer a schoolboy, but a student. A student at such an institute, the essence of the training system in which one of our mathematics teachers well formulated in the following figurative form.

A student comes home from school convinced that two and two equal four. Our teachers' job is to make that student question this by the end of the first year; by the end of the third - be sure that this is not so; and by the end of the fifth year - be able to prove that two and two are equal to anything, but not four.

This, of course, is quite exaggerated. But in a condensed form it represents the essence of the concept that there is no “once and for all established truth” in the world. There are only versions, hypotheses and theories. And they may be wrong. Moreover: they are precisely mistaken and, at best, give some getting closer to the truth. Over a certain period of time, this approximation describes reality with a sufficient degree of accuracy. But there inevitably comes a moment when this accuracy ceases to suit us. One theory is replaced by another. And there is nothing “scary” about this. This is a natural process of cognitive development.

There is, say, a classic textbook example in physics - the theory of caloric.

For quite a long time, physicists believed that processes associated with the transfer of heat from one body to another are determined by the presence of such a substance as “caloric.” But over time, the understanding came that the essence of such processes is completely different - in the thermal movement of molecules. Caloric "died". They refused him. But at the same time, all the laws of thermodynamics that were obtained on the basis of the “erroneous” theory remained...

By the time I read the article about the “growing” Earth, I had already passed the second stage - I was sure that two and two do not equal four. That is, that there are no “absolutely true theories.” But he still couldn’t prove that two and two equal anything but four. Therefore, the theory of the Earth changing its size rather simply amused me. Although it left some small wormhole in the depths of the subconscious...

It just so happened in life that somewhere in the mid-90s I plunged into the topic of ancient legends and traditions, as well as the problem of suppression by modern historical science of facts that contradict the now accepted picture of the past of humanity, which is drawn and promoted by this science in books and textbooks. With considerable surprise for myself, I discovered that a fairly large layer of information contained in ancient legends and considered by historians to be simple inventions of our distant ancestors, is confirmed in real facts, collected by modern science in a variety of branches of knowledge. And an attempt to combine scientific data and “mythological” information ultimately gives a very detailed and self-consistent picture of the distant past - only a picture that is very far from the one that historians paint for us.

In particular, the well-known plot of ancient legends about the Flood not only finds full confirmation, but also allows us to clarify the data accumulated by archaeology, geology, climatology and other sciences. The result that resulted from the “combination of the incompatible,” that is, the mutual intersection of “mythological evidence” and objective scientific data, was published in the form of an online article “The Myth of the Flood: Calculations and Reality,” which was later included as an appendix to my book “Ancient Mexico without crooked mirrors”, published by the Veche publishing house.

In principle, the reality of a cataclysm on a planetary scale under the code name “The Flood” bothers historians first of all. And for geologists who now recognize the possibility of catastrophes on the planet in the past, there is nothing “seditious” about this. The situation was worse with another circumstance that I encountered at the same time.

The fact is that in some ancient legends and traditions (see below) there were descriptions of such processes that could be directly associated with... the hypothesis of a “growing” Earth!

And then, from the depths of my memory, a memory of an article in the magazine “Knowledge is Power” surfaced. Only now it was not just a memory of a curious and amusing theory. Mutual intersection and addition of data from mythology and modern science in the topic about the Flood naturally raised the question - what if there is something here too?!

In order to find the answer to this question, I had to plunge into questions of geology, geophysics, geochemistry, paleoclimatology and paleomagnetism. The result was, without exaggeration, stunning - these mythologies really make it possible not only to clarify the theory of the expanding Earth, but also to significantly advance it!..

The result was an online article “Does the fate of Phaeton await the Earth?..”, which was later included as an appendix to the book “The Inhabited Island of Earth” recently published by the same Veche publishing house.

And here the problem arose. The conclusions of the article were in fundamental contradiction with the currently dominant theory of plate tectonics in geology. Since my interests lay in a completely different area, and it was not my plan to come into conflict with geology, the article for a long time remained more likely only as a kind of curious development of an equally curious theory, rather than as an application for something more...

(For those who are interested in the initial articles mentioned above, I can recommend taking a look at the website of the Laboratory of Alternative History, where they are posted on the page of my works. For those who are more interested in the substantive essence of the results obtained, I would advise not to waste time on this, because further in the book these results will be presented - and even in a more expanded version) ...

The strongest incentive for further progress on the topic of this book was a meeting in the early 2000s with Candidate of Historical Sciences Andrei Zhukov, with whom we became co-authors big project, associated with conducting a whole series of filming and research expeditions to places of ancient cultures and the release of the series documentaries"Forbidden topics in history." Despite a “classical” historical education and even receiving a scientific degree within the official system, Andrei (like me) was not satisfied with the presence of facts that contradict the picture of the past of humanity that is now accepted in historical science. And I was even more dissatisfied with the position of historical science itself in relation to such facts, which were either openly suppressed or declared to be fakes and falsifications without any objective grounds.

Since our positions and approaches here completely coincided, we decided to move forward together, using his humanitarian education and my technical education as complementary factors. And this mutual complement, as the further course of events showed, turned out to be very fruitful...

Even at our very first meeting, when we shared with each other our views on the problems of our future joint activities, Andrey raised the question of the reliability and correctness of both the dating of specific artifacts and the dating methods themselves, which I somehow didn’t even think about at that time. As a humanist, it was difficult for him to decide on this problem, since the bulk of the methods of so-called absolute dating (that is, determining not the relative, but the absolute age of an object) is based not on the humanities, but on technical knowledge. And this required effort on my part.

I won’t say that it turned out to be completely simple, but quite quickly it was possible to sort out the problems of dating objects that are relatively young, but make up the bulk of the source material for restoring the history of ancient civilizations. The result was an online article with long name“What do you want, sir?.. Menu of radiocarbon dating and dendrochronology,” which was included as an appendix in the book “The Civilization of the Gods of Ancient Egypt,” also published by the Veche publishing house.

Being used for dating objects with an age of a maximum of several tens of thousands of years, these methods, if they influenced anything, only influenced the dating of events of the very recent past (when compared with the time scale of the life of the planet as a whole). And although some of these datings are associated with the events of the Great Flood, which had a significant impact on modern look surface of the planet, the errors and shortcomings of these methods do not particularly affect the history of the Earth as a whole.

However, among historical artifacts there are also those that make us think about more significant periods of time and that pose “inconvenient” questions not only for historians, but also for the currently accepted picture of the evolution of the living world as a whole. For example, a collection of clay figurines from the Mexican city of Acambaro contains images of people interacting... with dinosaurs. And there are even more numerous scenes of human interaction with dinosaurs in the Peruvian collection of Ica stones.

Rice. 1. Man riding a dinosaur (Acambaro collection)
Rice. 2. Human hunting for dinosaurs (Iki collection)

According to modern views on evolution, the most ancient hominids (that is, the ancient ancestors of humans) appeared only a few million years before the current point in time, and dinosaurs went extinct as much as 65 million years ago. The gap between the two events is colossal - the “numbers” differ by an entire order of magnitude. Then where could the stories about human interaction with dinosaurs in the collections of Acambaro figurines and Ica stones come from?..

The size of both collections (tens of thousands of items), as well as the history of their formation, dismisses all suspicions of falsification. In addition, we were able to verify personally that the collections were genuine during the expeditions. But then where is the “error”?.. And what is the “truth”?.. People lived already during the period of dinosaurs, that is, tens of millions of years ago?.. Or did dinosaurs become extinct much later?.. Or are all datings generally incorrect? ..

Of course, even now we can find images of dinosaurs and people - in films, books, children's toys, etc. However, we don’t really live among dinosaurs. Their images reflect only our knowledge of the existence of these ancient animals. In the same way, the collections of clay figurines of Acambaro and Ica stones may well reflect not real events at all, but only ancient people's knowledge of dinosaurs(I adhere to this exact point of view). The only question that remains is where our distant ancestors got such knowledge. But this question already transfers the problem from the plane of the evolution of the living world as a whole to the plane of only the relatively recent history of mankind.

Everything would be fine, but in addition to the stories in the two collections, there are reports (albeit very scanty) about the discovery of dinosaur bones along with human remains. For example, in South America, where human remains were found even deeper than dinosaur bones. What to do with this?..

Moreover. There is also a whole layer of strange finds - artifacts (that is, artificially created objects) found in coal deposits and other rocks, the age of which is sometimes calculated not even in tens, but in hundreds of millions of years!.. But what to do with this? .

Rice. 3. Hammer in rock dating back over 100 million years

Such finds raise the question not only of the correctness of determining their age, but also of the reliability of geological dating methods, and therefore of the reliability of the currently accepted geochronological scale. And this is a huge layer of knowledge accumulated by a variety of sciences. And finding a gap in this knowledge is not so easy. There is no way to solve the problem right away. It was necessary to cling to something.

Archimedes needed a fulcrum in order to turn the Earth upside down. And here it was necessary to turn over not the planet itself, but “only” its history. But for this, too, some kind of fulcrum was needed. And the corresponding lever...

Rice. 4. Monograph “Unknown Hydrogen” (S.V. Digonsky, V.V. Ten)

This lever was the monograph “Unknown Hydrogen,” which was literally “forced on me” by one of its co-authors, Sergei Digonsky, for which I am extremely grateful to him. Having opened the monograph, I could no longer tear myself away from it and, despite the abundance of specific terminology, I literally devoured it, since it made it possible to identify very serious errors in the very principle of constructing a geochronological scale, that is, in the very foundations of the currently accepted picture of the history of our planet. And in addition, the ideas of the monograph significantly complemented and developed the theory of the “growing” Earth. As a result, in 2009, another online article was born with a title that spoke for itself - “The History of the Earth without the Carboniferous Period” (this article was also included as an appendix in the book “The Inhabited Island of Earth”).

All that remained was to take the last step - to decide to plunge into the vast world of basic knowledge of geology, geophysics and paleontology. And three events prompted me to take this step.

Firstly, almost immediately after the publication of the article on the Carboniferous period, Sergei Digonsky sent me materials from some research in the field of geology, which, although carried out fifty years ago, remained deeply in the shadows because they contradicted accepted concepts. As it turned out, geology also has its “alternatives” who do not agree with the dominant approaches and dogmas in this science.

Secondly, an employee of the Mineralogical Museum. Fersman RAS Leonid Pautov, who helped us in conducting research on some historical artifacts, being an adherent of traditional views in geophysics and geology, tried to “bring me back to the right path,” for which he let me read a book that outlined the history of the formation of modern geological theories. The result turned out to be exactly the opposite - the book made it possible to understand exactly where and why the scientific community made fatal mistakes, and where exactly one should look for the weak points of modern theories.

And thirdly, already during one of the discussions collected materials Another person helped me significantly - candidate of physical and mathematical sciences Viktor Panchelyuga, who introduced me to a selection of articles on the latest research in the field of the half-life of radioactive isotopes. An area that now plays a key role in the absolute dating of geological rocks.

The result of all this was the online article “A little about the current situation in geochronology,” which has not yet been published in paper form. It is this article that forms the main core of this book, which includes other mentioned articles, as well as materials used in their preparation, but not previously published for one reason or another.

But before we finally move on to a substantive presentation, I consider it necessary to warn the dear reader that reading the book will require certain mental efforts from him. Although I tried to simplify the text as much as possible, translating into ordinary Russian the numerous specific terminology that experts love to flaunt, but, alas, it was not possible to complete this everywhere. In addition, in order to really understand the material presented, the reader still needs to have some basic knowledge(at least in physics and chemistry).

I express my deepest gratitude to all those who in one way or another helped bring this book to life. Not only to those whose names are mentioned above, but also to those whom I did not mention, but who helped in collecting material, in discussing previously published articles and ideas at various stages of their formation.

Special thanks to all those who helped in organizing and financing the expeditions, during which material was also collected for this book.

I dedicate the book to my family and friends: my wife Natasha, my son Maxim, my brother Vladimir and his wife, also Natasha, who are always there and are always ready to help in any matter.

Header photo: Wallpaper @ eskipaper.com

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A light year is not a unit of time, as its name might lead you to believe. A light year is a unit of distance used in astronomy.

It is difficult to measure celestial distances in our usual meters and kilometers - they are so huge! A light year is the distance a ray of sunlight travels in a year, that is, in 365 days. But the speed of a light beam is almost 300 thousand kilometers per second! This means that a light year is equal to 9,460,800,000,000 km, that is, about 10 trillion kilometers. Therefore, it is much easier to say, for example: the brightest star in the sky, Sirius, is 8 light years away from us.

At first glance, this unit of measurement may seem inconvenient. But in fact, it is very convenient because of its clarity. For example, distance measured in light years indicates to which stars radio or other electromagnetic messages can be sent in order to receive a response within a real period of time, and not after hundreds or thousands of years.

Did you know that...

• The average distance to the Moon is approximately 376,300 km. This means that a beam of light sent from the surface of the Earth will take 1.2-1.3 seconds to reach the surface of our natural satellite.
• The closest star to us, other than the Sun, is Proxima Centauri, located at a distance of 4.22 light years from us.
• The diameter of our galaxy - the Milky Way - is 100,000 light years
• The closest spiral galaxy to us, the famous Andromeda Galaxy, is 2.5 million light years away from us.