this post was submitted on 30 Oct 2023
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Astronomy

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For the first time, astronomers have created a data-driven estimate for how many black holes are in our Universe: more than anyone expected.

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[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

I know it's not relevant and nobody cares but those bigger -illion numbers really tick me off. Like, it was once was a perfectly usable system. It was a million to some power. So a quintillion is a 5-illion, is a million to the 5th power, is 10^30. Simple. But then headline writers got a hold of the words billion and trillion to sensationalise about stuff like national budgets, who cares if they're using the right words for the right numbers, and now the pattern is broken. It's, what? A thousand times a thousand raised to a power?

So 40 quintillion is .. 40 × a thousand × a thousand to the fifth power, is .. 4×10^(1+3+15), 4×10^19? Is that right? 40,000,000,000,000,000,000? Why does it have to be so difficult? It's just numbers.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

It's just numbers.

Numbillion numbers.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago

That's numberwang!