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Comment by al_be_back | Hacker News Reader

a bit yes - but then again it's a unit Humanized, easier to read, more accessible I guess.

I find it hard to believe somebody would know what exactly is AU, yet at the same time struggle with fractions (or whatever is the proper name for it), while being OK with percentages representation of same numbers.

The whole point on an AU is we don't need to know an exact number. Using human relatable measurements means the numbers get mind numbingly big, fast. Even though the average human doesn't know the exact distance from the earth to the sun in meters and/or feet, they can get a rough sense of "the distance from the earth to the sun". also, at what exact moment are you taking that exact distance in meters/feet? the orbit is not exactly circular, so that radius measurement isn't the same all the time.

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.

Is it though? I can't think of any other units where we write it like that

Energy equals mass times speed of light squared, is the same as: E = mc². The former is more accessible to a general public audience (reader).

to be clear, I was referring to use of percentages rather than "Astronomical Unit" vs AU

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

i agree, it's a bit weird. personally I'd use 0.5 rather than 50% to record the facts, and 50% to make a salient point/summary, since the latter is a higher level of abstraction (perhaps even anthropocentric)

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