TFA specifies "more than 1,500 billion". That's more than a _trillion_, not "billions"! Why the reluctance to use the proper number?
Billions is not wrong. Trillion s (plural) would be wrong. "More than a trillion" would be needless words.
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First pictures from Euclid satellite reveal billions of orphan stars
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Re: First pictures from Euclid satellite reveal billions of orphan stars
#12TFA specifies "more than 1,500 billion". That's more than a _trillion_, not "billions"! Why the reluctance to use the proper number?
A lot of people outside of HN don't know what a trillion is.
Re: First pictures from Euclid satellite reveal billions of orphan stars
#13Earlier quoted context omitted.
Same for one billion: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Billion I've never heard someone use the long scale, it is only ever mentioned as a novelty. I think the scientific community, at the very least, has standardized on the short scale.
The long scale is common in French, German and Spanish for example. English usually uses the short scale. The scientific community uses SI prefixes, which aren't part of either scale (you don't say a billion joules which is ambiguous, you either say a terajoule for a long-scale billion or a gigajoule for a short-scale one).
Also common in Swedish, miljon = 10^6, miljard = 10^9, biljon = 10^12, biljard = 10^15, triljon = 10^18.
Re: First pictures from Euclid satellite reveal billions of orphan stars
#14TFA specifies "more than 1,500 billion". That's more than a _trillion_, not "billions"! Why the reluctance to use the proper number?
The designation of trillion is ambiguous: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trillion
my understanding is the long scale has largely died out
think it is more than permissible to use what is scientifically standard (trillion = 10^12)
Re: First pictures from Euclid satellite reveal billions of orphan stars
#15Earlier quoted context omitted.
Same for one billion: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Billion I've never heard someone use the long scale, it is only ever mentioned as a novelty. I think the scientific community, at the very least, has standardized on the short scale.
The long scale is common in French, German and Spanish for example. English usually uses the short scale. The scientific community uses SI prefixes, which aren't part of either scale (you don't say a billion joules which is ambiguous, you either say a terajoule for a long-scale billion or a gigajoule for a short-scale one).
Fair enough, but I still would be surprised to see the long scale used in scientific communications written in English.
Re SI Prefixes: you _could_ make the argument that they are essential another short scale since they are named every 3 orders of magnitude.
Re: First pictures from Euclid satellite reveal billions of orphan stars
#16Earlier quoted context omitted.
Same for one billion: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Billion I've never heard someone use the long scale, it is only ever mentioned as a novelty. I think the scientific community, at the very least, has standardized on the short scale.
The long scale is common in French, German and Spanish for example. English usually uses the short scale. The scientific community uses SI prefixes, which aren't part of either scale (you don't say a billion joules which is ambiguous, you either say a terajoule for a long-scale billion or a gigajoule for a short-scale one).
what? the scientific community absolutely also uses billion and trillion by short scale
it’s all over papers and nobody is ever using the long scale that i’ve seen
Re: First pictures from Euclid satellite reveal billions of orphan stars
#17Always a bit special to see science come from a spacecraft I had the pleasure of working on. Honestly there were a lot of issues during the build of Euclid that I was very glad to not be a part of, but seeing the images coming out of it now is pretty damn impressive.
Hope all of the engineers that struggled to get this mission spacebourne can enjoy!
Re: First pictures from Euclid satellite reveal billions of orphan stars
#18Earlier quoted context omitted.
The designation of trillion is ambiguous: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trillion
Same for one billion: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Billion I've never heard someone use the long scale, it is only ever mentioned as a novelty. I think the scientific community, at the very least, has standardized on the short scale.
The long scale is far from just a novelty, most European countries other than the UK use it. Actually I thought it was used in all non-English-speaking countries, but Wikipedia showed me that the situation is far more complicated than I thought:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Long_and_short_scales#/media/F...
Besides short scale and long scale, there is a sizable "short scale with milliard instead of billion" fraction, and of course some countries (China, India, Japan, Greece) have completely different systems. Most interesting is that Portugal uses the long scale, while Brazil uses the short scale. That must be confusing...
Re: First pictures from Euclid satellite reveal billions of orphan stars
#19Earlier quoted context omitted.
The designation of trillion is ambiguous: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trillion
Same for one billion: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Billion I've never heard someone use the long scale, it is only ever mentioned as a novelty. I think the scientific community, at the very least, has standardized on the short scale.
>> Same for one billion:
So that's how the US government will make the mult-trillion dollar debt go away. They'll just call it Billions.
Re: First pictures from Euclid satellite reveal billions of orphan stars
#20We can spot the orphan stars at this distance. However, Euclid needs to turn to closer targets than the Pegasus cluster to spot rogue planets.
https://www.theguardian.com/science/article/2024/may/23/eucl....
In this case, it found dozens of rogue planets in the Orion nebula, which is only 1,500 ly away.
I am presuming there are also going to be great numbers of rogue planets in deep space, not tied to any star or galaxy. But there would be no way for Euclid to spot them at that distance. Stars were hard enough.
I presume, in due time, there will be some sort of calculable estimation or projection of orphan stars and rogue planets per cubic parsec or kilosparsec.