Dear Bill,

Take a look at:

http://www.glyphweb.com/esky/default.htm?http://www.glyphweb.com/esky/concep
ts/lightyear.html 

Amongst other things, particularly check the use of 'atto-light year' at the
bottom of the page.

'Oh, what a wicked web we weave - when first we practise to deceive'.

In this case the deceit seems to be in the earnest interests of protecting
our precious astronomy patch (by using layering of jargon -- we are
different - therefore we are superior!) from those pesky metricationists.

Cheers,

Pat Naughtin LCAMS
Geelong, Australia
-- 

on 27/3/04 6:49 AM, Bill Hooper at [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:

> Recently Pat Naughtin suggested:
>> 1 milliday = 86.4 s          1 new minute    a bit longer than an old
>> minute
>> 1 centiday = 864 seconds    about a quarter of an old hour
>> 1 deciday = 8640 seconds    a little under 2 1/2 hours
> 
> I can't help feel uncomfortable using the SI prefixes with non-SI units
> (SI prefix milli with non-metric day to make milliday).
> 
> We may not be able to control what others do but I'm not sure those of
> us who want to promote SI metric should encourage such bastardizing of
> the prefixes.
> 
> Also, I would maintain that breaking the day into smaller units of
> millidays, centidays and decidays, where each is an odd multiple of
> seconds, is not much of an improvement over 24 hours, 60 minutes and 60
> seconds.
> 
> However, I am happy to see that Pat agrees with the importance of not
> changing the size of the SI second in any half baked effort to simplify
> civil (daily) time. That would cause more problems than it would solve.
> 
> 
> Regards,
> Bill Hooper
> Fernandina Beach, Florida, USA
> <><><><><><><><><><><><>
> Make it simple; Make it Metric
> <><><><><><><><><><><><>
> 

Reply via email to