this post was submitted on 04 Nov 2025
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[–] SomethingBurger@jlai.lu 25 points 1 week ago (3 children)

15.7 billion miles (168 AU)

Americans will convert their miles to every yee yee ass unit under the sun before using metric.

[–] ezterry@lemmy.zip 42 points 1 week ago (1 children)

To be fair AU means more to me than miles or km in this case.. 168 times further from us than we are to the sun.

But since you want metric ~25.1 terameters.

[–] Threeme2189@lemmy.zip 18 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (5 children)

But since you want metric ~25.1 terameters.

You think you're being witty, but you've just unintentionally shown why the metric system is so good.

25.1 terameters => 25,100 gigameters => 25,100,000 kilometers.

Easy as pie.

Edit: Ahh crap, I forgot about megameters. It comes out to 25,100,000,000 km. Sorry for the metric ton of confusion.

[–] Thebular@lemmy.world 7 points 1 week ago (1 children)

You're missing a few zeroes there I think

[–] Threeme2189@lemmy.zip 2 points 1 week ago

Just a few 😉

[–] Hadriscus@jlai.lu 6 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (1 children)

Your little off-by-one-thousand mistake is evidence that meters are ill-fitted for astronomy. au, al and pc exist for a reason

I checked and only au (astronomical unit) is listed in SI, while not being a SI unit per se

[–] Threeme2189@lemmy.zip 1 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Never said they were fitted, just that the conversion between units is (supposed to be) simple.

[–] Hadriscus@jlai.lu 1 points 1 week ago

It is but I would advise using scientific notation with exponent instead, it's harder to make a mistake

[–] Devjavu@lemmy.dbzer0.com 5 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Idk what these imperialist donkeys are talking about. 1 terameter is 10^6 kilometers. You're spot on.

[–] Threeme2189@lemmy.zip 2 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Thanks for the support, but I was indeed mistaken.

[–] Devjavu@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2 points 1 week ago

Ohh, now I see it. The typo at the bottom. Missed that.

[–] glorkon@lemmy.world 4 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Psst. You forgot the megameters.

[–] Threeme2189@lemmy.zip 2 points 1 week ago

How could I forget about the megameters???

[–] Simulation6@sopuli.xyz -2 points 1 week ago (1 children)
[–] Threeme2189@lemmy.zip 3 points 1 week ago

It's quiche in metric.

[–] Wolf314159@startrek.website 7 points 1 week ago

At that scale meters and miles are pretty close with respect to orders of magnitude, which is why practically everyone talks about these scales in AUs regardless of what units they actually used to do the science.

[–] ulterno@programming.dev 3 points 1 week ago

Though AU is a pretty legitimate term if you don't want to be going in Tera - Giga territory.
I'd assume astronomers other than in the US also use it.