4 ms·
We need to standardize on using Earth circumferences as the unit of length. Or better, football fields! (the type of football of course being implied by the web
by testplzignore 9mo ago
We need to standardize on using Earth circumferences as the unit of length. Or better, football fields! (the type of football of course being implied by the website's ccTLD)
- Pinus 9mo agoWe _have_ standardized on Earth circumferences for length, only we divide by 40 million to make the numbers more sane, and got the measurement slightly wrong!
- crote 9mo agoWe should just redefine it to make the speed of light a nice even 300.000 km/s - we are so close already!
- SAI_Peregrinus 9mo agoBut it's already a nice round 10m/s in base 299,792,458.
- jasomill 9mo agoWhy stop there when we could just as easily redefine it to be 1 (new base unit of length)/second or 1 meter/(new base unit of time)?
- Ekaros 9mo agoHow hard would it be to fix this? Could we theoretically add or subtract enough material or make whole thing slightly more dense or less dense to compensate?
- jasomill 9mo agoPer Wikipedia, the discrepancy is approximately 74 km, so digging a ditch with an average depth of approximately 74/2π ≅ 12 km around the circumference of the Earth would theoretically fix the problem. Feasibility and geological implications are left as exercises for the reader. Regardless, I suspect a more cost-effective fix would be to redefine the meter to be a couple "legacy" millimeters longer.