this post was submitted on 26 Oct 2025
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Science Memes

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[–] TheLeadenSea@sh.itjust.works 11 points 1 day ago (2 children)

Year is an incredibly arbitrary length

[–] null@piefed.nullspace.lol 1 points 1 day ago

All lengths are arbitrary.

[–] SpaceNoodle@lemmy.world 1 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Years measure time, not distance

[–] Spectrism@feddit.org 3 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (2 children)

Yes, but it's part of the definition of a light-year, i.e. the distance light travels in a vacuum within one Julian calendar year. Using a year as reference to the distance light travels within a given timeframe is fairly arbitrary. We could just as well use light-months, or light-decades, or some entirely different timeframe as reference.

[–] Cethin@lemmy.zip 3 points 1 day ago

On addition, we could measure year by a different planet. To the universe, choosing the time it takes the Earth to move around the sun one time is pretty arbitrary. Why not Mars? Or why not a totally different star system?

[–] null@piefed.nullspace.lol 2 points 23 hours ago

Speed = Distance over time.

There are no measurements of speed that won't face that problem.