The mass measurements aren't scientifically accurate. Hydrogen is a gas, meaning that it can fill the same amount of space with twice the mass at twice the pressure. Basilicus Prime needs a more constant standard.
I'm all ears for a better solution. I think it can be argued that "el" measurement assumes 0 pressure. But then I failed physics in college.
--Laveaux 22:01, 30 November 2006 (UTC)
No, that doesn't work, zero pressure would be a vacuum. I suggest using the mass necessary to form a black hole with a radius of one hold. That will be a huge amount, so the mass units will need to be tiny fractions of it.
2.8746*10^35 kg are required to form a black hole with a radius of one par. That number might be too big to use, but it's the only direct relation between mass and length that I can think of. Using water or a neutron star would reduce the numbers, but the ratio would be more complex. --Brilliand 23:37, 30 November 2006 (UTC)
I have found the solution. In Wikipedia:Planck units I found the following table, based entirely on physical constants:
| Name | Quantity | Expressions | Approximate SI equivalent |
|---|---|---|---|
| Planck length | Length (L) | 1.61624 × 10-35 m | |
| Planck mass | Mass (M) | 2.17645 × 10-8 kg | |
| Planck time | Time (T) | 5.39121 × 10-44 s | |
| Planck charge | Electric charge (Q) | 1.8755459 × 10-18 C | |
| Planck temperature | Temperature (Θ) | 1.41679 × 1032 K |
Change the names and you have a great set of constants.
This is good stuff, glad you brought it up. I'll sleep on it and get it to work. --Laveaux 03:28, 1 December 2006 (UTC)
I'm going to work on this today. I think I can power up (or down) these planck values as constants and use them in the BWM descriptions.
That said, I think there will be a "standard" BWM that can be used for any setting, but each civilization should have their own specific system of measurements and that can be subcategorized here. I will probably redefine the existing ones specifically for Helics and then come up with other terms to describe the plancks.
I will go through and correct all of the existing articles that use curren BWM descriptions after we get it hammered out. --Laveaux 11:05, 1 December 2006 (UTC)
Okay, here's where I'm going (at least for distance).
Standard Distance Unit (SDU) 1 SDU = Googol of the radius of a black hole when the black hole’s mass is compressed to the point where any more pressure would put it into gravitational singularity and when that value is equal to the wavelength of an electron. For astronomical purposes, this value is adjusted by a Googol (the power of 100).
Earth Conversion:
- 1 SDU = 1.6x10^65 meters
- 1 SDU = 1.6x10^62 kilometers
- 1 SDU = 9.95 x10^61 miles
- 1 SDU = 1.75x10^65 yards
- 1 SDU = 1.69x10^49 light years
I'm having a mental block and can't figure out how to do the reverse conversions, e.g. how many SDUs does 1 meter equal? I'll need to find this out to create a functional formula for users.
I'm going to keep the values of the existing system for Helics but make the basis cultural and arbitrary then subcatorgize them.
--Laveaux 18:38, 1 December 2006 (UTC)
To reverse the conversion, divide by the conversion number. The explanation for SDU is confusing. How about reducing it to "One googol times the longest wavelength that will cause a single photon to become a black hole"? According to Wikipedia, that is the significance of the Planck length. Common units and the other standard units can then be expressed in terms of this for simplicity. --Brilliand 19:54, 1 December 2006 (UTC)
Orders of magnitude[]
I think these non-earth-centered units are a great idea, but is there a way to apply SI prefixes or similar to them? It would be nice to measure the radius of a planet using these units, but the number would be huge if expressed in MDU and tiny if expressed in SDU. Nejssor 23:42, 2 January 2008 (UTC)
That's a good idea, but let's not use Earth-centered prefixes either. It might be good enough to express scientific notation in a more friendly-looking way - for instance:
10 MDU (ab) = 1,000,000 MDU
"ab" is Hollowstar for 5, so that means "100*10^5 MDU". Let's multiply by 100,000 instead of 1000, to keep away from Earth.
I can add that as a feature of the Convert template, if it doesn't look too cryptic. --Brilliand 05:03, 8 January 2008 (UTC)
I'd rather just use scientific notation for measures. It's simple, and there's no "Let's click through five links to figure out what this unit means."-problem --Webmaren 16:34, 4 January 2009 (UTC)