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The passage reads: "...where my is the proton mass, and A is the atomic weight of the moving atom. For an iron atom with A =56, S =200, and (30) gives T = 10^{65} yr . Even the most rigid materials cannot preserve their shapes or their chemical structures for times long compared with (36). On a time scale of 10^{65} yr, every piece of rock behaves like a liquid, flowing into a spherical shape under the influence of gravity. Its atoms and molecules will be ceaselessly diffusing around like the molecules in a drop of water."

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The passage reads: "...where my is the proton mass, and A is the atomic weight of the moving atom. For an iron atom with A =56, S =200, and (30) gives T = 10^{65} yr . Even the most rigid materials cannot preserve their shapes or their chemical structures for times long compared with (36). On a time scale of 10^{65} yr, every piece of rock behaves like a liquid, flowing into a spherical shape under the influence of gravity. Its atoms and molecules will be ceaselessly diffusing around like the molecules in a drop of water."
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Robert McNees (mcnees@mastodon.social)'s status on Thursday, 15-Dec-2022 18:12:16 UTC Robert McNees
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This part is tremendous fun. You get sentences like "The cold expanding universe will be illuminated by occasional fireworks for a very long time" and "...ordinary low-mass stars that have settled down into white dwarf configurations and become cold spheres of pure iron."
It's the theoretical physics equivalent of a late-night dorm room conversation.

In conversation Thursday, 15-Dec-2022 18:12:16 UTC from mastodon.social permalink