NASA’s New Horizons Team Strikes Gold in Argentina

Re:NASA’s New Horizons Team Strikes Gold in Argentina by gordon_freeman on Wednesday July 19, 2017 @03:39PM (#14807250)

should have been "more than". "Mere" does not make sense with a huge figure such as "four billion miles" IMO.

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Re:NASA’s New Horizons Team Strikes Gold in Argentina by lomnakkus on Wednesday July 19, 2017 @04:05PM (#14807443)

I think "mere" kind of makes sense at these scales? I mean the nearest known star (Proxima Centauri) is 40,208,000,000,000 km away. (Guess it depends on whether you're using "American" Billions or not...)

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Re:NASA’s New Horizons Team Strikes Gold in Argentina by greglindahl on Wednesday July 19, 2017 @04:25PM (#14807589)

Given that you're talking about an object in our solar system, I think almost all astronomers would not use "mere" or parsecs.

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Re:NASA’s New Horizons Team Strikes Gold in Argentina by lomnakkus on Wednesday July 19, 2017 @05:08PM (#14807956)

Ah, missed the "in our solar system" bit :).

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Re:NASA’s New Horizons Team Strikes Gold in Argentina by weberc2 on Thursday July 20, 2017 @10:50AM (#14812958)

What are "American" Billions? I'm an American and AFAIK our 'billions' is the same as anyone else's.

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Re:NASA’s New Horizons Team Strikes Gold in Argentina by lomnakkus on Saturday July 22, 2017 @07:26PM (#14830016)

I think it's answered by this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Billion

(I can't vouch for the specific wording, but search for "American".)

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Re:NASA’s New Horizons Team Strikes Gold in Argentina by gordon_freeman on Wednesday July 19, 2017 @04:50PM (#14807777)

They just fixed it on their article. It is "more than".

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Re:NASA’s New Horizons Team Strikes Gold in Argentina by rodiger on Wednesday July 19, 2017 @04:03PM (#14807433)

Agreed. Four billion miles could be nothing in space-talk though, as most distances I see are in light-years.

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