Polaris is 45-67 million years old.
The oldest total-group chondrichthyans, known as acanthodians or “spiny sharks”, appeared during the Early Silurian, around 439 million years ago.
It’s not even close.
Dinosaurs died off 65 MYA. Dinosaurs were most likely gone before Polaris formed.
Sharks are older than trees.
They’re older than a lot of things. Land plants, Yellowstone, appendages,dinosaurs, doritos.
Sharks are older than trees.
But are younger than the mountains.
Ehhhh they’re younger than some mountains though. There are ranges that are over a billion years old, but the Himalayas are “only” some 40-70 million years old, depending on when you start counting (40-50 if you actually start from being mountains, 70 if you start from “ground moves up”)
They’re mountains when it’s impressive that I can throw a football over them.
holu shit polaris is super young
Unfortunately (or fortunately?) this appears to be untrue.
Polaris is a cluster of stars formed about 2 billion years ago. Sharks originated about 450 million years ago.
One star of Polaris (Aa) appears to be 50 million years old, but it seems likely due to a collision of stars which added mass to it.
I just checked, Polaris is about ten times younger than sharks. The other two stars of its ternary star system are older, but not visible to the naked eye, so early sharks would not have been able to use them for purposes of navigation.
One of my favorites is “the Appalachian mountains are older than bones”
This is only sort of true, unfortunately. Polaris is a two-star system: Polaris Aa and Polaris B.
Polaris B is much older than sharks, by several billion years.
Polaris Aa appears to be younger than sharks, at a measley 50 million years old, compared to sharks’ 420 million years
HOWEVER it is unclear whether Polaris Aa is actually that young. Scientists believe that, based on some contradictory findings, that measurement may be inaccurate if Polaris Aa is formed from two different stars that merged. In that scenario, the model we use to calculate star age would no longer work and could give wildly inaccurate estimates of the star’s true age
TMYK
In my opinion Polaris B and Polaris Ab (it’s actually a three star system!) don’t count as ‘The North Star’ because they contribute almost nothing to the visible light seen without a telescope. Without Aa there’s just no north pole star at the moment.
But that’s interesting about the age being uncertain. I’d use the age of the merger as the age of the star anyway unless it didn’t add much mass (but in that case it would have been a short lived giant anyway…) which would still likely put it under the 420 million years mark.
Right but how did it know to be the pole star?? Huh?
Yeah! Makes ya think!
