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Old 29-September-2003, 05:45 AM
dracoverdi dracoverdi is offline
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Default How Ignorant do we expect people to be?

This article illustrates a habit of the press that annoys me:

http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?cha...F680A84189FF81

Quote:
Indeed, the two moons are 40 million times dimmer than Uranus is and the researchers had to overexpose the images in order to pinpoint their locations.
What is the standard unit for dimness? What does 'times' means in this context? Can't we say they are one 40 millionth as bright or that Uranus is 40 million times brighter than the newly discovered moons?. It's like the article the other day that said a galaxy was 10,000 times smaller than the milky way. Are we afraid of reciprocals?
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Old 29-September-2003, 05:05 PM
Betenoire Betenoire is offline
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No, no fractions! NO!

NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!
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Old 29-September-2003, 07:06 PM
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mike alexander mike alexander is offline
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While I'm pretty sure what they mean, I also liked the part where they had to overexpose the image in order to see them at all.
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Old 01-October-2003, 03:08 PM
Wingnut Ninja Wingnut Ninja is offline
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Default Re: How Ignorant do we expect people to be?

Quote:
Originally Posted by dracoverdi
What is the standard unit for dimness?
Uranus, it seems.
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