The Layman’s Distance Measurement

Have you ever noticed that shows on the Discovery channel measure disatances with a fairly unique measure? The Discovery channel is not the only place that I have seen or heard this, it’s just what caused me to think about it. This universally understood measure of distance is the football field, or FF.

I think that the reason that they convert vast height and distances into FF is that they feel that the simpletons watching the program could not possibly understand the distances involved without invoking a sports analogy. So, just so everyone can understand how far away the sun is, I have converted the distance to the sun, 93 million miles, or 1 AU, to the universally understood FF - 1,636,380,000.

Now I get it, the sun is really far away! 1 AU = 1.63638e9 FF

February 21, 2006 | Filed Under General 

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  1. Krikkit Weblog » NASA to crash space probe into moon on April 11th, 2006 12:30 pm

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