✳flâneur — a map of the web's best reading

Constellations are Younger than Continents — LessWrong

lesswrong.com · 2,709 words · saved by 1 readers

At the Bay Area Solstice, I heard the song Bold Orion for the first time. I like it a lot. It does, however, have one problem: He has seen the rise and fall of kings and continents and all, Rising silent, bold Orion on the rise. Orion has not witnessed the rise and fall of continents. Constellations are younger than continents. The time scale that continents change on is ten or hundreds of millions of years. The time scale that stars the size of the sun live and die on is billions of years. So stars are older than continents. But constellations are not stars or sets of stars. They are the patterns that stars make in our night sky. The stars of some constellations are close together in space, and are gravitationally bound together, like the Pleiades. The Pleiades likely have been together, and will stay close together, for a few hundred million years. I think they are the oldest constellation. The stars of most constellations are not close together in space. They are close in the 2D pr

x Constellations are Younger than Continents — LessWrong Secular Solstice World Modeling Curated 271 Constellations are Younger than Continents by Jeffrey Heninger 19th Dec 2023 2 min read 21 271 At the Bay Area Solstice, I heard the song Bold Orion for the first time. I like it a lot. It does, however, have one problem: He has seen the rise and fall of kings and continents and all, Rising silent, bold Orion on the rise. Orion has not witnessed the rise and fall of continents. Constellations are younger than continents. The time scale that continents change on is ten or hundreds of millions of

Explore this link on the map →

related reading