A physicist proposes a uniform measurement system in space

A physicist has proposed to overcome the lack of reasonable consistency in the measurement system of astronomical and astrophysics.

Retired physics professor Keith Atkin of the University of Sheffield wrote in Astronomy & Geophysics magazine that our current global "system" is extremely confusing.

He wrote: "Many units used by astronomers create a confusion between the British Imperial measurement system, the CGS (centimeter - gram - second) system, the SI system, along with a number of complete units. Full independence on astronomy '.

If you keep track of all the spatial news, you may be familiar with the messy measurements.

Most of the world tends to use SI (International Measurement System) or units of measurement for everyday life - based on liters, grams, meters, and Celsius or Kelvin.

However, the US still uses Imperial measurement systems, such as ounces, fluid ounces, feet and miles, and Fahrenheit. And Atkin noted 'America represents about 4% of the earth's population'.

The United Kingdom also has a problem - the country undergoes a slow and long transition to the metric system, which means that while the schools teach the standard system, the Imperial system is still heavily used in practice.

The world tends to use international measurement systems or units of measurement for everyday life.

Mr. Atkin said: "Students who have studied physics using SI units and started to have an interest in astronomy will join an astronomical community, and will often see people talking about telescopes. '6-inch' writing or hear enthusiastic introduction of spacecraft moving with "thousands of miles per hour" .

Professional astronomers are not immune to this chaos when astronomical units (light), light years, and parsec (pc) are considered respectable and useful.

'In fact, these units are redundant and do not serve a useful purpose'. An uncommon special case is megaparsec - an awkward and ugly combination of a SI prefix unit and then a non-SI unit.

This means that there is a spiritual effort involved in trying to think and conduct experiments in another unit system. But it can also cause other problems - because each new calculation is put into work, there is an opportunity to create another error, no matter how simple the calculation is.

And if it involves equipment, it can be expensive. This was clearly demonstrated in 1999, when NASA lost $ 125 million for a part of the Mars probe due to the risk of conversion, using Imperial measurements while the Lockheed engineering team built it. erection of the spacecraft used the SI measuring system.

Professor Atkin proposed that we make a switch to all astronomical distance measurements based on meters, using the prefix system SI, and the measurement speed is km / sec.

The mass can also be expressed in kilograms instead of the Sun's mass, as a baseline.

This will be easy to standardize. The megametre (106 meters) can be used for planetary scales, gigametres (109 meters) and terametre (1012 meters) in the Solar System, the petametre (1015 meters) and exametre (1018 meters) for the inside. Milky Way, and zettametre (1021 meters) and yottametre (1024 meters) for the longest distances.

Similarly, the weight of the Sun can be expressed, instead of using the current unofficial prefix, such as 1.98 besagrams - that is 1033 grams.

All these changes are intrinsic, can be difficult to implement - and certainly time consuming.

"As a colleague recently commented:" To read the distance in space, consider the distance to the nearest galaxy Andromeda as the baseline will be a better deal close to the solar system than now, before we read its distance in zettametres " , Professor Atkin said

"However, even if there are only some of these changes, it will certainly benefit the understanding and communication in astronomy and between astronomy and related science."

The study was published in Astronomy and Geophysics.