Re: OFFLIST: Galactic Year: (was: Re: Reviving an old tradition)

This wasn't actually offlist, btw.

On 2/11/06, tomhchappell <tomhchappell@...> wrote:
> >>The time it takes for the galaxy to revolve once about its axis.
> >>Some hundreds of millions of years, I forget exactly.  --larry
>
> You could define a "galactic year" as the length of time it takes
> _our_ star to revolve around _our_ galaxy's center.
That is, indeed, the correct definition, and the one I forwarded.
Henrik was merely (perhaps over-)simplifying.

The lyric is "We go 'round every two hundred million years", which is
a bit low by modern estimates.  Of course, we've also adjusted our
estimate of the number of stars in the galaxy upward by a factor of a
thousand since that was written, but fortunately dropping "billion' in
for "million" is a scansion no-op. :)


--
Mark J. Reed <markjreed@...>