Google Can't Math Parsecs

(lesswrong.com)

13 points | by ubutler a day ago ago

4 comments

  • dmd 21 hours ago ago

    Amusingly, I (Daniel Drucker) originally discovered this while playing with extremely stupid compound units for energy - in particular converting joules back and forth to “atmosphere barn megaparsecs”. Yes, that’s energy.

    This would also be a good place to mention my units toy: https://3e.org/units/

    • mncharity 18 hours ago ago

      Neat. Years ago I did a spike with order-of-magnitude measure sliders. So mosquito mass, with imaginary handcrank force, quickly goes relativistic. And low order 10 kg gives a picture of cat, with high order 100 bpm heart rate beeping (metabolic rate scaling with mass - whale hearts are massive and slooooow). Now with AI, perhaps one might flesh out such a space, with measures and landmarks and media and links, and survive the nightmare barrier of copyright permissions, with a more plausible level of effort. It might be fun to be able to surf an oom measure space, to develop a feel for measures and reasonable quantities.

      > “atmosphere barn megaparsecs"

      So say a pressure vessel, the length of a galactic cluster, with subatomic cross-section... hmm, ok, an exercise in engineering left for the reader. It seems carbon nanotubes, 1 nm^2 (1e10 barns), can do order 10 GPa, plugged with ice.

  • zeristor 21 hours ago ago

    Perhaps this makes the Kessel run just that bit more feasible.

    • DarkUranium 16 hours ago ago

      I still like the idea that Han Solo was --- quite simply --- bullshitting, talking out of his ass.

      It fits the character and it resolves the filming/script mistake with a good explanation that doesn't take mental gymnastics.