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The next sentence after the first part you quoted: "The latest results are in: The electron is rounder than that." Which would be great if the Earth was actual
by ralferoo 4y ago
The next sentence after the first part you quoted: "The latest results are in: The electron is rounder than that."
Which would be great if the Earth was actually perfectly round, but we've known for over three centuries that it's not. I'm sure the science the article is reporting on is fine, but it definitely sounds like the author of the article is out of their depth.
- LadyCailin 4y agoThat’s not what it’s saying. It’s saying, if you blew up the electron to the size of the earth, and sprinkled a sugar grain on it, then the electron is rounder than that.
- School-Cotton 4y agoNot a sugar grain, a sugar molecule.
- kevin_thibedeau 4y agoDefinitely should have used spherical cows.
- WJW 4y agoI know you're getting at the whole "oblate spheroid" shape thing, but I'm pretty sure people have known it wasn't perfectly round for way longer than that. You only need to look out a window to see hills and mountains after all (unless you live in the Netherlands ofc). Fun fact: the actual shape of the Earth is neither a sphere nor an ellipsoid but a "geoid", literally something "shaped like the earth".
- butterNaN 4y agoIt's trying to put a size comparison so that our human minds can picture the scale. Earth is just a placeholder in this example. The author is inviting you to picture the the size of the planet. They could've just written the sizes in terms of 10^x , however that is not as human-friendly to envison. There is no need to be unkind towards the author here, maybe your point is that they could have done a better job at presenting the scale for the reader? How would you write it?