this post was submitted on 02 Sep 2024
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Science Memes

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Seconds (mander.xyz)
submitted 2 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]
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[–] [email protected] 14 points 2 months ago (3 children)

Mass in seconds? How? I get mass in Joules, but seconds?

[–] [email protected] 9 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) (1 children)

There are two possibilities I can think of:

  • Orbit duration can be used to calculate mass
  • The diameter of a star or the parallax distance on the sky (in arcseconds) can also be used to evaluate mass
[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 months ago (1 children)

Size doesn't say much about mass though.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 months ago (1 children)

I thought stars of similar masses were also of similar sizes. They're not?

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 months ago

I'm no astrologer but from what I've learned, we also need to look at the color to glassify stars into categories. It varies a bit though in each category so it's a blunt tool.

Then there are other objects like gas clouds and even galaxies. For those, we have no idea of the density distribution, so radial size gives us even less info.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 2 months ago

I measure the mass of my stool by seconds it takes to discharge

[–] [email protected] 4 points 2 months ago

Well the modern definition of a kg is based off of the second and the metre https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kilogram :P