3 ms·
What would be a good number of years to use? "Literally as old as the Universe is now" seems like as close a number as you can use to put timespans that big int
by lvh 7y ago
What would be a good number of years to use? "Literally as old as the Universe is now" seems like as close a number as you can use to put timespans that big into _some_ sort of perspective.
- sp332 7y agoHow about an actual estimate? If it's 100 billion years that would be an even cooler number to throw around. 7 times the age of the universe! A more useful number would be MTBF or a decay rate.
- lvh 7y agoBut the point is that decay rate is almost entirely a function of temperature, so you have to pick... something. Unless you feel like log/log years/thermodynamic Beta is a better way to communicate decay than “it lasts as long as the universe has been around”. (Which they do! In the paper! Just not in the summary because nobody has a feel for what log/log beta/time is.)