Wednesday, January 14, 2009

Parsecs and Eons

I made a startling discovery yesterday. For the sake of non-physics types, I will define a few terms.

1 parsec is equal to 3.26 lightyears or 3.1 x 10^16 meters.
1 eon, as used in astronomic and geologic terms, is equal to one billion years.
The International Standard (SI) unit for speed is meters/second (m/s).
(Just think about distance traveled/time it took to travel, or miles/hour - that's your speed. If you say "I'm traveling in some direction at that speed", than you've also defined your velocity.)

Here it comes, are you ready?

Woah!! Coooolnes!
on

2 comments:

  1. MattJanuary 14, 2009 at 11:05 AM

    Shouldn't that be an "approximately equal to"?

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  2. Nickolas PickolasJanuary 14, 2009 at 11:26 AM

    When dealing with PARSECS and EONS, isn't there going to be a little bit of uncertainty? I mean, how precise is our definition of a parsec? Or, for that matter, our definition of a second (a lot of seconds makes a billions years - so a tiny error makes a big deal). And even if those two definitions are exact (right.), then a parsec/eon is equal 0.977 m/s, which I feel perfectly comfortable rounding up. :-)

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