The astronomical unit AU is commonly used for things in the solar system. 1 AU is roughly the average distance to the sun, about 150 000 000 km
Comment on A metric tonne (1000 kg) should be called a megagram (1 Mg).
Eheran@lemmy.world 1 year ago
Units closer related to everyday stuff are those that stick around. Like horse power or km. People don’t use Mm but instead 1’000s of km, even into the million km for cars. Even in space they still tend to use km like for the distance to the moon or sun. Only once the distances get absurdly large is there a shift to either another unit (light years) or the use of different notation (like 3.14E12 m).
too_high_for_this@sh.itjust.works 1 year ago
Melatonin@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 year ago
I know the metre has been defined by earth’s size, or other various things, all rather arbitrary. Wouldn’t it make sense to define it by the speed of light and a light year, divided into even portions? Start by dividing a light year (in a vacuum) by ten, and keep dividing by ten until we get a unit that is close to the useful size we are accustomed to?
That way we could scale up, and I suppose that’s going to be useful in the future.
aulin@lemmy.world 1 year ago
As a Swede, using units that give number above ~100 starts to get unwieldy. Hence why we use mil (1 Scandinavian mile = 10 km) once we get to triple digits in km. “It’s 60 mil to Stockholm” is immensely more natural than “it’s 600 km to Stockholm”.