A billion years or giga-annum (10
9 year
A year or annus is the orbital period of a planetary body, for example, the Earth, moving in its orbit around the Sun. Due to the Earth's axial tilt, the course of a year sees the passing of the seasons, marked by change in weather, the hou ...
s) is a unit of time on the
petasecond scale, more precisely equal to
second
The second (symbol: s) is the unit of time in the International System of Units (SI), historically defined as of a day – this factor derived from the division of the day first into 24 hours, then to 60 minutes and finally to 60 seconds ...
s (or simply 1,000,000,000 years).
It is sometimes abbreviated Gy, Ga ("giga-annum"), Byr and variants. The abbreviations Gya or bya are for "billion years ago", i.e. billion years
before present
Before Present (BP) years, or "years before present", is a time scale used mainly in archaeology, geology and other scientific disciplines to specify when events occurred relative to the origin of practical radiocarbon dating in the 1950s. Becaus ...
.
The terms are used in
geology
Geology () is a branch of natural science concerned with Earth and other astronomical objects, the features or rocks of which it is composed, and the processes by which they change over time. Modern geology significantly overlaps all other Ear ...
,
paleontology
Paleontology (), also spelled palaeontology or palæontology, is the scientific study of life that existed prior to, and sometimes including, the start of the Holocene epoch (roughly 11,700 years before present). It includes the study of fossi ...
,
geophysics
Geophysics () is a subject of natural science concerned with the physical processes and physical properties of the Earth and its surrounding space environment, and the use of quantitative methods for their analysis. The term ''geophysics'' som ...
,
astronomy
Astronomy () is a natural science that studies astronomical object, celestial objects and phenomena. It uses mathematics, physics, and chemistry in order to explain their origin and chronology of the Universe, evolution. Objects of interest ...
, and
physical cosmology.
The prefix
giga- is preferred to
billion- to avoid confusion in the
long and short scales over the meaning of billion; the postfix
annum may be further qualified for precision as a
sidereal year
A sidereal year (, ; ), also called a sidereal orbital period, is the time that Earth or another planetary body takes to orbit the Sun once with respect to the fixed stars.
Hence, for Earth, it is also the time taken for the Sun to return to the ...
or
Julian year:
:1 Ga
j = s,
:1 Ga
s = s (epoch
J2000.0
In astronomy, an epoch or reference epoch is a moment in time used as a reference point for some time-varying astronomical quantity. It is useful for the celestial coordinates or orbital elements of a celestial body, as they are subject to pertu ...
).
:1 Ga
s = y
Byr was formerly used in
English-language
English is a West Germanic language of the Indo-European language family, with its earliest forms spoken by the inhabitants of early medieval England. It is named after the Angles, one of the ancient Germanic peoples that migrated to the is ...
geology and astronomy as a
unit of one
billion year
A year or annus is the orbital period of a planetary body, for example, the Earth, moving in its orbit around the Sun. Due to the Earth's axial tilt, the course of a year sees the passing of the seasons, marked by change in weather, the hou ...
s. Subsequently, the term
gigaannum
A year or annus is the orbital period of a planetary body, for example, the Earth, moving in its orbit around the Sun. Due to the Earth's axial tilt, the course of a year sees the passing of the seasons, marked by change in weather, the ho ...
(Ga) has increased in usage, with Gy or Gyr still sometimes used in English-language works (at the risk of confusion with Gy as abbreviation for the
gray
Grey (more common in British English) or gray (more common in American English) is an intermediate color between black and white. It is a neutral or achromatic color, meaning literally that it is "without color", because it can be composed o ...
, a unit of radiation exposure). Astronomers use Gyr or Gy (or Ga, where the a stands for ''annum'', Latin for "year") as the symbol for gigayear.
See also
*
Kyr
The abbreviation kyr means "thousand years".
kyr was formerly common in some English language works, especially in geology and astronomy, for the unit of 1,000 years or millennium. The "k" is the unit prefix for kilo- or thousand with the suffix ...
*
Myr
The abbreviation Myr, "million years", is a unit of a quantity of (i.e. ) years, or 31.556926 teraseconds.
Usage
Myr (million years) is in common use in fields such as Earth science and cosmology. Myr is also used with Mya (million years ago). ...
*
Aeon
*
Orders of magnitude (time)
*
Year#Abbreviations yr and ya
*
Year#SI prefix multipliers
References
Units of time
Geology
Units of measurement in astronomy
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