this post was submitted on 04 Nov 2025
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[–] SomethingBurger@jlai.lu 22 points 1 day 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.

[–] ulterno@programming.dev 3 points 15 hours 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.

[–] ezterry@lemmy.zip 41 points 1 day 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 17 points 1 day ago* (last edited 21 hours 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 day ago (1 children)

You're missing a few zeroes there I think

[–] Threeme2189@lemmy.zip 2 points 21 hours ago

Just a few 😉

[–] Devjavu@lemmy.dbzer0.com 5 points 22 hours 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 21 hours ago (1 children)

Thanks for the support, but I was indeed mistaken.

[–] Devjavu@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2 points 21 hours ago

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

[–] Hadriscus@jlai.lu 6 points 23 hours ago* (last edited 23 hours 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 21 hours ago (1 children)

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

[–] Hadriscus@jlai.lu 1 points 21 hours ago

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

[–] glorkon@lemmy.world 4 points 23 hours ago (1 children)

Psst. You forgot the megameters.

[–] Threeme2189@lemmy.zip 2 points 21 hours ago

How could I forget about the megameters???

[–] Simulation6@sopuli.xyz -2 points 23 hours ago (1 children)
[–] Threeme2189@lemmy.zip 3 points 21 hours ago

It's quiche in metric.

[–] Wolf314159@startrek.website 7 points 1 day 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.