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Subject: Fwd: Re: [office-formula] Straw poll - slug (and lightyear)
"Andreas J. Guelzow": > We say "Light-year, the distance light travels in a year of 365.25 days" > which isn't exact at all (we probably mean in vacuum...). Ah, that's an error in the spec. It should *definitely* say "distance light travels, in a vacuum, in a year of 365.25 days". In general, we should be giving exact values where we can. PATRICK: Please insert ", in a vacuum," after "light travels", at that point. Let me know if you want me to create a separate JIRA comment for this. WARNING: Technical nitpick ahead: The distance light travels in a year, in a vacuum, *is* exact; the meter is actually defined in terms of speed of light in a vacuum. And while an Earth year isn't exactly 365.25 days, for purposes of a light-year, that's the exact value of the "year". It's not well-documented, but astronomers use this "standard year approximation" of 365.25 days when stating light-years. And since a day is exactly 24*60*60 seconds, this has an exact value. I actually had to track that down, and I'm pretty sure I posted my citations (though I can't remember where they are right now). If anyone knows differently, please let us know now. --- David A. Wheeler
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