How come people say 5,000 km and not 5 Mm?
why not just say millions of meters or Mega meters?

  • kinttach@lemm.ee
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    8 months ago

    On Earth it’s just not needed. In nearby space it could make sense — distance to the Moon is 369 Mm. Distance to the Sun 149 Gm. But people aren’t good at visualizing the difference between kilo-, mega-, and giga-. It isn’t obvious from those numbers just how much further away the Sun is.

    • leftzero@lemmynsfw.com
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      8 months ago

      For interplanetary space and beyond the time it takes for light to cross the distance makes more sense, I’d say. The moon is about half a second away, the sun about eight minutes, Voyager I a bit less than twenty hours, Alpha Centauri or Barnard’s about four years, and so on…