MEANING OF A MILLION YEARS

Shannon News, 4 May 1926, Page 4

MEANING OF A MILLION YEARS

Astronomers and geologists habitually deal in millions—of years: It is impossible to conceive of a billion of miles. Even the familiar illustration of a railway train steaming so many miles an hour for so many years convoys a very vague idea. It is equally difficult to form an idea of the vast period of time with which geologists deal. What idea can man, who' is liinited to a hundred years, form of a million years? A professor tolls us how a striking impression of such a lapse of time may partially be conveyed to the mind —“Stretch a piece of paper S3ft 4in. long around the Avails of a room somewhat over 20ft square, recall the events of life to give some conception of a hundred years, and then consider that a mark one-tenth of an inch broad-at the one end of the paper represents the century, while the whole strip gives place for only a million years.” An even more striking illustration may be seen in the works of Nature. Could we stand upon the edge of a gorge a mile and a half in depth, cut out of the solid rock by a tiny stream scarcely visible at the bottom of the terrible abyss, and were we informed that the' little streamlet was able to wear off annually only one-tenth of an inch from its rocky bed, what would be our conception of the prodigious * length of time that the stream must have taken to excavate the gorge? We should certainly feel startled on finding' that the stream had performed the enormous amount Of work in something less than a million years.