Editorial: “The new definition of the year should be welcomed“
WE have dog years, financial years and calendar years, but a quest to get geologists and chemists to agree on a scientific year has led to a surprisingly bitter dispute.
The official bodies representing the two groups have now settled on the annus as their definition of the year, allowing both groups’ data on the half-lives of radioactive elements to be pooled. “We are trying to unite the communities,” says geologist of the Berkeley Geochronology Center in California. “It was a topic that raised some surprisingly animated views.”…
