4 ms·

For my purposes 10 AU has a lot more meaning than 1 billion km. 1 AU has a lot more context

• dylan604 5y ago
  It's one of those things that I still tilt my head slightly at when thinking about how the human brain struggles with really large numbers. Its just an odd thing.
  • II2II 5y ago
    In a case like this, I suspect it has more to do with visualizing the solar system rather than how large something is. When we speak in AU, we can create a mental model with the Sun, Earth, and other object since everything is normalized to the size of Earth's orbit. When we speak in kilometers, a bit of arithmetic has to be done before creating the model. Regardless of the units though, we aren't directly visualizing the distances since they will be outside the scope of human experience until we actively start traveling the solar system. Edit: for clarity.