"What it's like to walk on a dead star"

"Skycloud" wrote in message
...

I have absolutely no problem with the British billion and I wish it had
prevailed, but the US has an obsession with being biggest, best, and
first which occasionally becomes absurd.

You're right. I've fallen into the habit of using the US billion rather
than
the British. I must say I think it's much more convenient to have the
billion come up after on the next thousand-multiple than the
million-multiple.


I think the 'battle' here has been lost - that is if you want people to know
what you're talking about without explaining which billion you mean every
time ! I actually blame the majority of English speakers who complain about
this, but have allowed the proper term for 10^9 - milliard - to be
forgotten, and so only have themselves to blame.

"Charles Gilman" wrote:

Why not a British billion? It's primarily a British newsgroup (hence the uk
in the name), and multiplying by a million at a time is more logical in that
the prefix indicates the power of a million involved (an American billion
isn't ANY rational number squared).

A thousand isn't any rational number squared either. Why does that
matter anyway?

Tim
--
You are being watched. This gives you power.

In message , Skycloud
writes


"Jonathan Silverlight" wrote
in message ...
In message , Charles Gilman
writes

I have absolutely no problem with the British billion and I wish it had
prevailed, but the US has an obsession with being biggest, best, and
first which occasionally becomes absurd.
But I had my doubts that Skycloud was using it, and bigger doubts that a
star will have cooled substantially in 100 thousand million years.
That's only about 10 x the current age of the universe.


You're right. I've fallen into the habit of using the US billion rather than
the British. I must say I think it's much more convenient to have the
billion come up after on the next thousand-multiple than the
million-multiple.

I was attempting to not step too far outside accepted cosmological time
frames or put people right off, by citing the mere 100 x 10(9) yrs. As has
been pointed out though, this 'room temperature star' though could well need
a full British billion years to get 'comfortable'. But really, has no
serious work been done on this?


It has, but I suspect it's a little _too_ serious for me :-)
Typing "heat capacity" "white dwarf" into Google gets lots of hits, and
"cooling of a white dwarf" gets 52. For instance, the MIT exam question
at
http://www.core.org.cn/CN_NR/rdonlyr...tical-Physics-
ISpring2003/8B5E1DAA-FEAA-46A3-A648-408521362372/0/Exam4.pdf&ei=BcQlQ5-ZA
qbeRMmY1NMH looks as though it could tell us a lot.
I like that "mere". There was an article in Sky and Telescope some time
ago that tried to predict the future of the universe up the times when
protons decay and large black holes start evaporating. One of the most
interesting ideas was a crusted star, which still has a hot core due to
some nuclear reaction but has a solid crust with clouds and an
atmosphere. That was something like 10^10 years from now - as Arthur
Clarke notes, scientific notation makes even defence budgets look small.

As you ask, the point is not that the British meanings are all something
squared (which as powers of a million they coincidentally are), but that
they should all be the same thing (a million) to the power of the number
implied by the prefix. In that system Europa's mass is 48 quadrillion
grammes and you can think "Ah, quadri-, that means four, million to the
four, ten to the 24". Substituting septillion means a cumbersome extra
calculation. I prefer the simpler system as I prefer metric to imperial
measurements. Just as I can't be bothered to remember which number is ounces
per pound and which pounds per stone, I can't be bothered with the extra
"plus one" of the thousand-at-a-time when there are so many more interesting
things in the Cosmos to think about.

"Tim Auton" wrote in message
...
"Charles Gilman" wrote:

Why not a British billion? It's primarily a British newsgroup (hence the
uk
in the name), and multiplying by a million at a time is more logical in
that
the prefix indicates the power of a million involved (an American billion
isn't ANY rational number squared).

A thousand isn't any rational number squared either. Why does that
matter anyway?

Tim
--
You are being watched. This gives you power.