More of a "beautification" suggestion to consitently using more accessible units or ratios:
E.g. Asteroid belts are weighed in MT (Mega (metric?) tons), planet rings relative to moon masses (or is it the other way around?!); here I can't really relate to trillions of tons, so I'd prefer moon mass.
I am ambivalent with respect to the semi-major axis - we are cruising around at Ls/s speed to planets at ?Ls distance, but the semi-major axis is given as au (astronomical unit, 1au=~500Ls). I would prefer Ls instead of au, as we already have a perception of distance based on that.
Another example are planets, the mass is given as relative earth mass, but the radius is in km (kilometers). In this case I would prefer to also give the radius relative to earth radius.
This can be particularly helpful, as now you can directly calculate/estimate the power of 3 of this relative radius for the relative volume, and compare that result to the given mass ratio to know whether this planet is equal (=> earthlike or metal rich), heavier (high metal) or maybe just a light rock/snowball.
E.g. if a planet is given with 3x earth radius and 15x earth mass => 3^3=27x earth volume but only 15x earth mass, so it's likely a rock/snowball. In many cases this could be a fairly simple evaluation/"guesstimation" if we directly got the relative earth radius (but definitely not the absolute mass or volume
).
Edit: With respect to the last point, optionally we could also just get the density of the body - we have the mass and with the radius we have the volume, so it is possible to calculate the mean density: mass/volume, unit kg or ton per m^3, e.g. Earth has a mean density of 5514 kg/m^3. That way we would directly see what type of planet we are looking at (which is maybe the reason why it is not done )
E.g. Asteroid belts are weighed in MT (Mega (metric?) tons), planet rings relative to moon masses (or is it the other way around?!); here I can't really relate to trillions of tons, so I'd prefer moon mass.
I am ambivalent with respect to the semi-major axis - we are cruising around at Ls/s speed to planets at ?Ls distance, but the semi-major axis is given as au (astronomical unit, 1au=~500Ls). I would prefer Ls instead of au, as we already have a perception of distance based on that.
Another example are planets, the mass is given as relative earth mass, but the radius is in km (kilometers). In this case I would prefer to also give the radius relative to earth radius.
This can be particularly helpful, as now you can directly calculate/estimate the power of 3 of this relative radius for the relative volume, and compare that result to the given mass ratio to know whether this planet is equal (=> earthlike or metal rich), heavier (high metal) or maybe just a light rock/snowball.
E.g. if a planet is given with 3x earth radius and 15x earth mass => 3^3=27x earth volume but only 15x earth mass, so it's likely a rock/snowball. In many cases this could be a fairly simple evaluation/"guesstimation" if we directly got the relative earth radius (but definitely not the absolute mass or volume
).Edit: With respect to the last point, optionally we could also just get the density of the body - we have the mass and with the radius we have the volume, so it is possible to calculate the mean density: mass/volume, unit kg or ton per m^3, e.g. Earth has a mean density of 5514 kg/m^3. That way we would directly see what type of planet we are looking at (which is maybe the reason why it is not done
)
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