omg what
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Replying to @Felgraf_Physics @Nymphomachy
Which led to the joke unit of measurement, the "barn-hubble", which is the total volume of a cylinder with a diameter of one barn and a length of the Hubble length (the distance between the Earth and the farthest observable galaxies, i.e. "the length of the observable universe")
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It's about one liter
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Replying to @arthur_affect @Nymphomachy
HAH! I didn't know that one! My doctoral dissertation was on using Surface Plasmon Resonance (and some other stuff) to assist in nano-particle self-assembly, mostly using nanospheres. It took EVERY FIBER OF MY BEING not to subtitle my dissertation "Balls are touching"
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Replying to @Felgraf_Physics @Nymphomachy
There's a whole list that used to go around on Usenet of "whimsical units of measure", like saying that the most significant life milestone you can celebrate is being one gigasecond old (which is roughly 31.69 years)
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Replying to @Felgraf_Physics @Nymphomachy
A "truly metric system of time" would be interesting, like a kilosecond is about 16 minutes, so the normal length of a TV show would be "2 kiloseconds", a class period would be "3 kiloseconds", a movie would be "5 kiloseconds"
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A 24-hour day would be about 90 kiloseconds, but in our futuristic space society that's left Earth behind they'd probably just round up to 100 ks, a 26.6-hour day, like on Deep Space 9 It would actually fit most people's natural sleep cycle better
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What were the other entries A "smoot" is a unit of measure equal to exactly 5'7", recorded in history because of an incident where Oliver Smoot, MIT class of '62, was physically used to measure the length of the Harvard Bridge in smoots as a fraternity hazing
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The experience of being personally used as a reference prototype for a unit of measure and then, immediately, employed as a measuring device apparently ignited a lifelong passion in Smoot, who went on to become president of both ANSI and ISO
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It sounds like a joke but it's truehttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oliver_R._Smoot …
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I wonder what "a penelope" would be I mean everyone knows the joke about helens (a "millihelen" is the amount of beauty required to launch one ship)
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