> a distance of about 79% of an astronomical unit
> located about 46% of an AU from its stars
Does anyone find it weird that distances are quoted like this, and not 0.79AU and 0.46AU ?
Is this the conventional way to write it?
> located about 46% of an AU from its stars
Does anyone find it weird that distances are quoted like this, and not 0.79AU and 0.46AU ?
Is this the conventional way to write it?
Freedom Units are the best units.
an equivalent monetary example would be describing something which costs 79 cents as costing "79% of a dollar"
sounds weird no?
LHC uses terms like 90% speed of light to be more specific example
i guess it all depends on what circles you do or do not float in.
And notations like 0.9c are also quite commonly used for velocities close to the speed of light
(the LHC tends to use TeV more often as a unit, which corresponds to a certain velocity for protons, but they mainly care about the energy)
But using percentages with the speed of light makes some sense because it marks one end of an absolute scale, there is no way to go 1.1c or 2.5c. So using a percentage emphasises how close we are to the maximum value.
But the same doesn't apply to AU.
half an AU, half the speed of light, half a parsec, half a mile, again fine
90% of an AU, 90% of the speed of light, 90% of a parsec, 90% of a mile. That sounds odd.
I could understand wanting to explain what AU stands for, and what an Astronomical Unit represents, it just seemed weird to then convert everything into percentages as well
nor does the average person know the exact radius/diameter of the earth, jupiter, or the sun, but we often see references to the earth is a fraction of jupiter and that the sun is some large number of jupiters.