Re:Astronomers see a black hole awaken in real time
by mr_mitm on Wednesday June 19, 2024 @11:11AM
(#40729037)
I don't get it. Isn't precision always relative? Who cares how large the numbers sound in certain units?
Re:Astronomers see a black hole awaken in real time
by oh2aa on Wednesday June 19, 2024 @12:25PM
(#40729754)
No, precision or error can measured in absolute or relative terms. In either case, the unit is irrelevant, you could say +/- "0.000001 big bang timespan." The point is that in the realm of human experience, that tracking error is quite big.
you're in good company. most cosmological "dates" are not precise. for example, the age of the universe is suspected to be about 13.7 billion years +/- 20 million years. That's a really big +/- in years, but just 0.2% tolerance. the size of milky way is estimated at 26.8 ± 1.1 kiloparsecs. again, that's a lot of miles/kilometers of a range. it's not like they can run out and "pull tape" to take that measurement.
it's one of my favorite quirks of astronomy. of course even the tolerances/variances are going to be astronomically large.