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Cassini Discovers First River On Another World
AbsoluteXyro writes "NASA's Cassini orbiter, which has been dutifully exploring the Saturn system since 2004, has captured images of the first river ever observed on another world — and it's a biggun. 200 miles of flowing hydrocarbons meandering down a valley in the north polar region of Saturn's moon Titan, emptying into the awesomely named Kraken Mare — itself a body of liquid roughly the size of the Mediterranean Sea back on Earth. But don't think of going for an extraterrestrial skinny dip quite yet, temperatures on Titan average a brutally cold 290 degrees below zero (Fahrenheit)."
No bombing.
Diving permitted at deep end only.
NO SMOKING.
The white spots on the river banks look like population hot-spots on earth.
Let the conspiracy theorists begin making up stuff.
Surely they will claim something about extra-terrestrial cities and FBI secrets.
~ Best man at your service.
I get that no one on Slashdot RTFA, but this time even the description says "200 miles of flowing hydrocarbons."
Try reading the summary to find out that it's hydrocarbons.
SJW n. One who posts facts.
Next up on Fox News - Terrorists on Saturn's moon are out to destroy America! Support out troops! Praise the lord and pass the ammunition!
Two factors:
It's hydrocarbons, not water.
Titan's surface pressure is 1.5 bars, 50% higher than Earth.
I don't get how this is new. Cassini has been detecting branching river systems and large lakes (Great Lakes size) filled with liquid methane since early in the mission. This latest release is adding to the mapped area, but isn't particularly new in that regard. However, if you read the original NASA press release on the Cassini web site, it makes more sense. This is not the first, but the longest river system that has been observed so far on Titan, at about 400km long.
This is one of the few times that I'd rather see the temperature in the Rankine scale over Fahrenheit!
Essentially, they had 4 systems to choose from (Kelvin would be ideal), and they picked the very worst choice!
Free unix account: freeshell.org
Hmm, hydrocarbons and not a plant in sight? I'm thinking we might want to stop calling oil and natural gas fossil fuels.
At least according to wikipedia it's most likely liquid methane and ethane. (I think oil and gasoline are longer hydrocarbon chains like octane, nonane, etc.)
Did you know 80 to 90% of the moderators on slashdot wouldn't recognize a troll even if one dragged them under a bridge.
It's only -179 C. Not exactly shorts weather, mind you.
I doubt the writer is trying to coddle the reader. Chances are, the writer doesn't know anything other than Fahrenheit.
... are you stupid? Of course they use proper units.
This is a press release intended for the general public.
For large sets, this will be our guide even unto death, for the LORD will work for each type of data it is applied to...
Coooool. You can see vague horizontal lines on the sea. Waves perhaps?
So, instead of reading the article, you decided to search wikipedia instead? That's so messed up....
Highly unlikely. Americans have been learning Celsius since the 1970s. AFAIK every other country has succumbed to using Celsius only. So anyone using Fahrenheit is likely to be American and is therefor likely to know Celsius. This is especially true for NASA which uses metric for pretty much everything.
For some reason the writer didn't feel bound to use the government mandated system and therefore chose the more convenient Fahrenheit system.
I often don't like the choices people make, but I like the fact that people make choices. That's why I'm a conservative.
... are you stupid? Of course they use proper units.
This is a press release intended for the general public.
You'd think so, but tell that to the Mars Climate Orbiter which was expecting SI units but instead was given horses per submarine per twatwaffle or some other such ancient unit and took a steep dive into the atmosphere and burned up.
I'm quite ignorant of organic chemistry, but I thought hydrocarbons were fossils. How can there be hydrocarbons without life?
Or am I WAY off in my ASSumptions?
There are plenty of organic molecules out in space. All organic means is "contains carbon".
Organic compounds form anywhere there is carbon, which is made in stars and spread around by supernovae. Given that hydrogen makes up 99.8% of the stuff out there most of the carbon compounds you find in space are simple hydrocarbons, either aliphatic stuff like methane and ethane or aromatics like naphthalene and other poly-aromatic systems.
Horses per Submarine!
You have made my day. If I only had mod points this evening!
I'm quite ignorant of organic chemistry, but I thought hydrocarbons were fossils. How can there be hydrocarbons without life?
Or am I WAY off in my ASSumptions?
Organic chemistry is a misnomer. Most of the hydrocarbon molecules formed in the universe have been created without life. Just a byproduct of carbon, oxygen (mostly as Carbon Monoxide), hydrogen and a few other random chemicals along with a bit of fusion and a lot of time.
It would still burn OK (if there was any oxygen around). You could still make hydrogen and power fusion reactions (if we knew how). Lots of potential energy in the universe, more than we could ever use. Just hard to get to.
If you think drilling on the northern end of Siberia is hard, try a Jovian moon. Makes for nice science fiction reading, but as far as it being an instructional video, we have a ways to go.
Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
I don't know many people who use the metric system for temperature. Each thermometer is different, if I told you that I have 4.5 cm in my room, you wouldn't be much wiser.
Ezekiel 23:20
I can start planning my black water rafting trip.
How is Celsius worse than Fahrenheit in this situation?
River of hydrocarbons and no one is blaming BP for the spill?
Bzzt. Kelvin is an SI unit.
Bio questions? Ask me to start a Q&A journal. Computer analogies available for most topics!
That is 94 Kalvin, really the only scale that make any sense for numbers this low.
Troll is not a replacement for I disagree.
Essentially, they had 4 systems to choose from (Kelvin would be ideal), and they picked the very worst choice!
Not to mention Kelvin is SI base unit. Kinda the norm when you are talking about scientific news to a bunch of nerds. Remember the whole "News for nerds, stuff that matters" motto? Or did the spirit of that die when CmdrTaco left?
"If you are going through hell, keep going." - Winston Churchill
More combustible fuel than all the Middle East combined! Good thing we didn't elect Romney, or we'd be drafted to fight for the liberation of Titan from whatever God-forsaken lifeform that would allow such a resource to be so underultilized.
Jesus fucking Christ. Over the last ten years there have been numerous articles all over the place reporting amino acids, sugars, alcohols and other organic compounds even in deep fucking space. Christ, pal, Titan is packed full of hydrocarbons.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
Yes. An error made by the contractor, who used His Majesty's standard, while NASA specs all of their requirements in metric.
I couldn't even tell you how high the temperature is right now, as my thermometer is laying on its side. I can only give you its length.
Awesome science stuff happens, queue 300 posts of retards bitching about the unit of measurement a writer chose to use so the public he writes to can relate easier.
If you have an issue with the measurement don't bitch and moan, do the conversion and move on. That's what those of us raised on the imperial scales do when we see metric stuff posted (unless we were those fortunate to have grown up learning both)
Or maybe it's a road system, and what we pick up as hydrocarbons is just the exhaust emissions from their congested traffic.
I'm Canadian, you insensitive clod, and I'm not impressed by your 4.5 cm.
---
ECHELON is a government program to find words like bomb, jihad, plutonium, assassinate, and anarchy.
But who needs to drill when there are seas of the stuff flowing right on the surface!
It's not "kelvins", it's "Kelvin".
If you're going to correct someone it's a lot easier to be forgiven for being wrong yourself if you don't sling personal insults... you prat.
Ummm.... nope? Celsius is much more useful than Fahrenheit in virtually every application, and as far as I know only you USians still use it.
At some point, you've got to stop complaining and just do the math. (or find a website to do it for you).
Sometimes boldness is in fashion. Sometimes only the brave will be bold.
Looking at the image on the NASA page, it jumps out at you: it's a fractal. To quote Marathon 1, "They're eveywhere!"
-- haaz.
Bzzt. Kelvin is an SI unit.
He could have said SI then. Or is it that in the US, these two things are synonymous? Where I live, temperatures sort of aren't a part of the definition of "metric system" (although naturally, they're a part of the SI extensions).
Ezekiel 23:20
Non-US citizen would be more exact.
Tomorrow is another day...
It'll be hard to pry away from us, too. There's more integers between 32 and 212 than between 0 and 100. So if you don't use decimal points, Fahrenheit is of a higher precision. Even still, when you're talking about temperatures never seen on earth, Kelvin or Celsius still make far more sense.
Well it does tend to shrink when it gets colder, doesn't it?
Religion is what happens when nature strikes and groupthink goes wrong.
Beware of false precision. If the instrument is only precise to 100 km and they measured 400 km, then it would be correct to report 200 miles and not 249 miles.
No no, c'mon, don't be rude, he meant Kelvins, the rather underused temperature scale of lower Kyrgyzstan, first coined in 1552 by scientist and British transpat Sir Howie Rudestash Kelvins. 0 degrees Kelvins is defined as the freezing point of that congestion you get from too many fish and chips cooked in tallow, and 100 degrees is defined as the point where spotted dick catches fire.
Really, this should be well known. Personally, I blame public schools.
Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
You missed the word "hydrocarbons" in the summary?
Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
This is a press release intended for the general public.
Ordinarily I would agree with you. Fahrenheit was intended to relate to the physical realm that humans experience: 0 is about the temperature of freezing seawater and 100 is about the temperature of the human body. In this case though, the temperature is well below what the general public has direct knowledge of. It should have been listed in K first, with F in parentheses just so the US general public reader would get that it's way colder than anything ever measured on Earth.
No - just that we prefer integers. It doesn't take much inertia to prevent a switchover. As the world can see.
In the Celsius world, people also have an intuitive feeling for the temperature ;D
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
Yes, 'the metric system' is generally used in North America to indicate the SI system, in contrast to traditional units (imperial in Canada, customary in US.) Drawing a distinction between the core metric units and the other SI extensions would be an unnecessary level of hair-splitting; we'd call those... I dunno, metric spacetime units, but that's definitely not a distinction people need to draw often, so the meaning disappears due to conservation of Huffman coding space.
Bio questions? Ask me to start a Q&A journal. Computer analogies available for most topics!
I agree that it would have been preferable to use kelvin, but the point still stands that the submitter was trying to relate to the common reader, so he opted for the imperial scale.
It wasn't a scientific paper, it wasn't a scientific press release. It wasn't even in TFA. It was strictly in TFS.
So, if the beings on Titan fart oxygen, they could light them.
Have gnu, will travel.
0C is the freezing temperature of fresh water, which is far more relevant a point than anything to do with seawater (and Fahrenheit didn't use real seawater anyway, it was ammonium chloride). 0C is the point your drinking water freezes, which is a lot more relevant to most humans. If immersed in freezing seawater or freezing freshwater you'll be dead before you have much time to think about the difference in human perception between 0F and 0C. They're both deadly without special protection. 10C is cool but easy to handle with a light coat, 20C is comfortable room temperature. Anything over 30C is freaking hot. Divide between those points accordingly. 100C is the temperature of boiling water (at STP) that you shouldn't be sticking your hands into.
I don't buy the "human experience" aspect at all for the silliness that is Fahrenheit. The freezing point of fresh water is THE most important point on a temperature scale relating to human effects, and Celsius puts that at a logical 0 rather than weird 32. I always thought it was dumb that you had to do a bit of albeit simple math to figure out how many degrees you were above or below the freezing point using the Fahrenheit scale. With Celsius, it's the + or -. Much simpler.
It's just what you're used to, and I see no downside to Celsius at all. Furthermore, Celsius degrees are a little bigger than Fahrenheit degrees. Less precise, you say? Human perception can't reliably tell the difference between 1 degree F anyway, and struggles to consistently perceive Celsius degrees (I can usually estimate +-2 or 3 Celsius at best).
At -179C, it doesn't really matter if it is in F or C. It's far outside normal human experience unless you have a habit of dipping body parts in liquified gases.
No - just that we prefer integers.
Except when you can use fractions - 3/8 inch for instance.
"For every expert, there is an equal and opposite expert"
Americans use Fahrenheit too. Where is Usia? Or did you misspell Asia. There aren't too many Asians that use Fahrenheit.
Fahrenheit give you more precision before needing to resort to decimal points or fractions. Fahrenheit neatly boxes what humans regularly experience between the values 0 and 100 while managing to have the freezing point of water at 2^5.
I often don't like the choices people make, but I like the fact that people make choices. That's why I'm a conservative.
I guess I'm just coming from a different cultural background. We have had the term "International system of units" ad the official name embodied in our law since the 1960's and "metric system" was something you heard in connection with the French revolution in your history lessons.
Ezekiel 23:20
Fahrenheit is of a higher precision.
I have never personally needed to know that the temperature is 38.2 degrees C outside.
http://michaelsmith.id.au
In the Celsius world, people also have an intuitive feeling for the temperature ;D
That might be true, but in this case these temperatures are not found on Earth, so none of us have anything to really compare it to.
"For every expert, there is an equal and opposite expert"
FTFY:
Ummm.... nope? Celsius is much more useful than Fahrenheit in virtually every application where the other people you're communicating with know Celcius but not Fahrenheit, and as far as I know only you Americans still use it.
(AFIK there is no such places as Usia.)
I often don't like the choices people make, but I like the fact that people make choices. That's why I'm a conservative.
Or is the river a river of oil?
More like natural gas.
http://michaelsmith.id.au
Well it does tend to shrink when it gets colder, doesn't it?
At those temperatures, it's propabably an innie.
"For every expert, there is an equal and opposite expert"
They sometimes do metric conversions ;)
http://michaelsmith.id.au
10C is cool but easy to handle with a light coat, 20C is comfortable room temperature. Anything over 30C is freaking hot.
This is a good example of why we like Fahrenheit. We can easily talk about more than three temperature ranges. In the 30s you need a warm but not superwarm coat. In the 40s you need similar coat but you'll feel more comfortable wearing it. In the 50s you have light jacket weather. In the 60s the light jacket is optional. The 70s are perfect. The 80s are hot enough for swimming but not uncomfortably hot. The 90s are uncomfortably hot. Over 100 and you pretty much stay indoors.
If you want to be more precise you can say the "low 90s" (still good swimming weather) or "high 90s" (good swimming weather for youngster, indoor weather for older people)
And in the winter w can talk about the weather being in the 20s or teens, or perhaps near 0. It has to get pretty cold before we need to go negative (although there are plenty of places up north that need to do that regularly).
I often don't like the choices people make, but I like the fact that people make choices. That's why I'm a conservative.
No - you may not need a tenfold increase in precision, but Fahrenheit does have double. The difference between 39 and 40 degrees Celsius is almost 2 degrees in fahrenheit.
Dividing inches into halves and then into halves again is easy to measure visually. I personally don't like using mm all that often for measuring things just because the lines are too close together. I realize that rulers with inches shows a line every 1/16th of an inch, but the lines are usually different lengths. I don't know why that's not done for even numbers of mm on the metric side. It's a much easier spatial math to me.
Even so I have never wanted to know that the temperature is 39.5 or 40 degrees for general "walking outside" purposes. Two or three degree precision is fine for me and thats about the accuracy you get from weather reports and cheap instruments anyway.
http://michaelsmith.id.au
Well Celsius is easier than Fahrenheit to convert to Kelvin.
And? The difference between 71F and 73F is not exactly something a human is tuned to. Depending on where you live and what you acclimated to, that temperature range might represent a hot day, or a cold day, but it would be the rare person who says 71 is comfortable but 73 is suffocatingly hot. For most people, a weather report broken down by Low, Mid, High and the tens place is good enough, i.e., "expect temperatures in the high 50s tomorrow" is a common way to express a weather report and good enough for people to know how to dress.
What changed under Obama? Nothing Good
I guess I've been thinking in terms of measuring a fever where 1 degree makes a huge difference even in Fahrenheit and not so much the weather.
Its a radar image. At that scale I would expect 1% precision or better.
http://michaelsmith.id.au
How is Celsius worse than Fahrenheit in this situation?
I imagine it would be because Celsius is harder to determine due to the wooshing sound going on.
No, because while you can insert decimals to Celsius to get a more meaningful range of values, you can do the same for Fahrenheit and get still MORE useable data points.
The preceding comment is my own, and in no way construes an opinon of the Emperor of Mankind.
A 1, a 2, a 1, 2, 3... "Moooonn, riiiiveeer"... that's what comes to my mind.
This is silly: units are not "better" because they are smaller (otherwise, one has to conclude that centimeters are better than inches and pounds better than kilos and seconds are better than hours).
A unit is better if the scale makes sense. for a unit used commonly, degrees Celsius makes sense: from water freezes to water boils. Fahrenheit goes from "saturated brine solution freezes" to "temperature of a human wil a slight fever". This is seriously indefensible shit right there :)
Strange, based on your username I wouldn't have expected you to bypass the logic of the argument and rush to straw men.
Let me restate:
Nobody gives a shit where you keep 0 degrees or 100 degrees. It simply does not matter.
Fahrenheit is good for body temps and weather, as those are generally confined to the upper end of the first hundred degrees F.
Celsius is better for communication and scientific measurement, particularly once you leave the easily-habitated parts of Earth behind. It's a better standard for measuring extreme cold and heat.
I'm not telling anyone that your precious Celsius is garbage. I'm just saying that for weather and body temp measurement, there are demonstrable advantages to Fahrenheit, simply because it has a finer numbering scale in those specific areas.
The preceding comment is my own, and in no way construes an opinon of the Emperor of Mankind.
Depends what you use the units for. Celsius is just a bit coarse for the most common use for a temperature scale: setting a thermostat. Degrees F are spaced the right amount for setting a digital thermostat, while degrees C need half-degree steps - awkward.
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
All of which is truee but unimportant. We al lknow the One True System of measure is the Furlong-Firkin-Fortnight system! And which temperature scale goes with that? Hint: it's not Furlong-Firkin-Fortnight-Electronvolt.
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
You do realize that there are quite a few integers between 10 and 20, and between 20 and 30, that serve the same distinguishing purpose as your precise splitting into 40-50-60-70-80-90, don't you?
Again, the finer numbering system argument is, to me, just absurd. For me, it is much more important to have a scale that makes sense.
I am going to guess that you are American, and that it never occurer to you that Fahrenheit makes no sense at all if you were not raised with it. I have no problem dealing with miles: the conversion is not so straightforward to km, but it's ok: just a linear factor. Pounds and kg, sure, fine, same thing. Hell, inches and feet are alright, as long as you don't start using fractions to compare them (seriously, what is larger: 5/16 or 3/8 -- of course you can figure it out, but 0.31 and 0.19 are so much easier to compare) .
Fahrenheit? you are talking noise to me. And I know the scale and what it means: it is just too painful to try and figure it out. It may well be that you are pointing the finger on something which had not made sense to me until now: there is a phobia of decimal places in America. Why? Mystery.
it's a digital thermometer! it is typically correct to 0.1 C. Display it!
Yeah, but my parent (any many americans repeat that claim all the time about temperature and lengths) was of the opinion that Fahrenheit is particular well suited to develop an intuitive feeling for temperature (or in case of feet and inches for distances). My point is, you always develop an intuitive feeling for the typical units used in your society. That is something humans are good at ;D Does not matter if it is a foot or chakku or meter.
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
200 miles of flowing hydrocarbons meandering down a valley in the north polar region of Saturn's moon Titan, emptying into the awesomely named Kraken Mare â" itself a body of liquid roughly the size of the Mediterranean Sea back on Earth.
Wouldn't that be a sight. I'd love to watch a high definition video of this river. Imax!
You must gather your party before venturing forth.
Comment Moderation: +1 "Oh Snap"
Actually, having a separate unit of temperature at all is quite artificial. In physical formulae, temperature always appears as a product kT; here k is Boltzmanns constant, which basically converts between your chosen units of temperature and energy.
Boltzmanns constant can often get cumbersome to drag around, so it's common to just set k=1 in physics. You then end up measuring temperature in units of energy (which makes sense since it is related to the thermal energy per particle), and as a bonus, this makes entropy dimensionless (so we can measure information in "bits", just as in computer science.)
At least they could mark 5mm
Sure then you use one significant digit to the right of the decimal point in celcius.
http://michaelsmith.id.au
Good point, but even with high resolution images it may be hard to pinpoint the furthest "headwaters" as they may be just a trickle.
http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=USian
I am Canadian. Canada is in North America, which makes up approximately half of the Americas. Therefore I am American. I do not use Fahrenheit.
Fahrenheit is used in the United States of America, often referred to as 'The Unites States' or simply 'The US'. USian.
Celsius neatly boxes what water regularly experiences between the values 0 and 100 while managing to have the freezing point of water at 0.
See what I did there?
I've ruler I've ever owned does exactly that.
Having a home with poor air circulation and a thermostat which runs warm as a consequence, I have to disagree: in the winter, a few degrees Fahrenheit in the 66-72 range are definitely noticeable.
Doh. Every ruler*
This is actually an interesting point, but it works against you. You see, Americans' fear of decimals leads them to use a scale with a finer precision. I'm not too familiar with the conversion, but from this discussion I understand that 1 degree C is roughly the same interval as 2 degrees F. So when you're taking someone's temperature, then you're getting a precision of 0.5 degrees Celsius, while my European thermometer, which indicates temperature in 1/10ths of degrees has a precision of 0.1 degrees Celsius.
I'm not familiar with American thermometers, they might have a single decimal digit as well, which would move that precision towards 0.05 degrees C, but that sort of precision is not necessary and it turns the "no decimals" argument on it's head.
Funny argument, Mr Fogg. I've hardly ever seen anybody use decimal points talking about temperature. It's already very hard to tell the difference bewteen, say, 23C and 25C so 23.5C are mostly considered useless pseudo-precision, unless in a technical process where readings are automated anyway.
Oh, the beautiful gloss of greality!
Nope. He ment "Kevins" - the traditional unit for stupidity in German school classes. One dozen Kevins (dK) reduces the average IQ to 1/12.
Oh, the beautiful gloss of greality!
Or 1/2 wit, like the GP.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
Garbage. You think a domestic heating thermostat is accurate to one degree of either scale? The variation between different points in the room will be more than that anyway.
For anything where more precision is needed, whether science or jam making, you'd be using fractions anyway.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
I hope you are not employed in any clinical capacity, and trust you have only entered a hospital as a patient or experimental subject.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
There is, that really fast guy comes from there.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
PV = nRT. Is it hiding behind the R?
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
Hey, they had to start with something.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
Next week, they'll find it has a shopping cart and most of a bike in it.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
We use tenths of a degree for Fahrenheit on a thermometer, too. But in casual conversation you can drop off the decimal and still be somewhat more accurate. I never said I had a strong case or anything - just that there's arbitrary reasons we're still on our scale.
There's more integers between 32 and 212 than between 0 and 100. So if you don't use decimal points, Fahrenheit is of a higher precision
That is by far the feeblest argument I have ever seen in defence of anything. Ever.
If you're going for higher precision than the nearest degree, you need decimal points anyway. E.g. if you want the average human body temperature you have to write 98.6 F anyway. And if you're talking about the weather the difference between 71 and 72 F is as irrelevant as the difference between 21 and 22 C
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
I'm just saying that for weather and body temp measurement, there are demonstrable advantages to Fahrenheit, simply because it has a finer numbering scale in those specific areas.
0.1 of a degree is far finer a difference than any normal person would ever use to measure body temperature by, and as for weather, the nearest degree is fine in everyday use whether it's F or C.
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
No - you may not need a tenfold increase in precision, but Fahrenheit does have double. The difference between 39 and 40 degrees Celsius is almost 2 degrees in fahrenheit.
So what? It's not like 40 degrees instead of 39 Celsius is somehow going to kill you. Have you ever been in a situation where it has made any difference whatsoever whether it's 104 degrees Fahrenheit or just 103?
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
I guess I've been thinking in terms of measuring a fever where 1 degree makes a huge difference even in Fahrenheit and not so much the weather.
If you're measuring a fever you should use decimal places whether it's F or C.
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
It's the tiniest pebble of resistance to changing to Celsius. See the original post. That may not be a good reason at all, but we don't have good reasons. We have reasons in the general sense, and I was just listing them.
Yes, but if I'm calling in sick to work, for example, I can round to the nearest degree and it's still fairly clear what you're communicating. Whereas 1 degree rounding difference in Celsius is huge on that small range of survivable human body temps.
Having a home with poor air circulation and a thermostat which runs warm as a consequence, I have to disagree: in the winter, a few degrees Fahrenheit in the 66-72 range are definitely noticeable.
Nobody's saying that there isn't a noticeable difference between 66F and 72 F (19C and 22C)
It just has no bearing on whether there's a noticeable difference between 71F and 73F (22 and 23C), which for any normal person there wouldn't be.
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
Fahrenheit neatly boxes what humans regularly experience between the values 0 and 100 while managing to have the freezing point of water at 2^5.
You Americans are coming up with the most fantastical justifications. I'm English and was brought up using Fahrenheit (and then later had to learn Celsius) but even I fail to see the magic advantage of having the freezing point of water as 2^5 degrees.
Also, 0F is -18C and 100F is 38F and that is a peculiarly arbitrary set of limits to what humans regularly experience. In the UK, the range is more like -10C to 32C, in the Middle East it would be up to 45C and in Scandinavia down to -25C, and there's nothing particularly meaningful about it being 113F or -13F respectively.
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
Just saying. After all, it's our language...
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
horses per submarine per twatwaffle
Mod parent up.
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
0 is about the temperature of freezing seawater
I have never encountered freezing seawater, and will quite happily die without ever having encountered freezing seawater. I do not care what the temperature of freezing seawater is, any more than I care what the temperature of molten lava is. If I'm anywhere near either of them, the only thing I want to know is how to get away from them.
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
And in the winter w can talk about the weather being in the 20s or teens, or perhaps near 0. It has to get pretty cold before we need to go negative (although there are plenty of places up north that need to do that regularly).
In the UK we just like to know whether it's above or below freezing point. To be honest, whether it's -1C or -15C doesn't really make that much difference, you're still going to have iced up cars, roads like skid pans, trains cancelled and schools shut and so on.
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
I did not say that the total range is noticeable. I said that 2deg F is noticeable in that range. We are more sensitive to temperature variation than you are giving credit for.
Oddly enough Celsius is indeed better for this use. 1* Celsius is approximately the amount of difference in temperature it takes for the human body to say "hey the temperature changed"
That is the typical usage. I don't believe it's very accurate.
I can call you a European since you live in Europe. Why can't I be an American because I live in the Americas?
America is much bigger than the US of A
How do the NASA scientists know that these pictures are of rivers and not long inlets? In other words, how do they know the hydrocarbons are flowing?
You mean using a ratio of integers instead of a decimal representation?
For a "human experience" scale though, being able to divide it up into decades is pretty convenient though. I've never really "gotten" Celsius. I understand it, but for scientific work Kelvin is a much better scale since it starts at zero, and for things like describing the weather Fahrenheit just seems a better fit.
0C Also known as: ice forming aka stuff gets slippery. So yea, living in a country that "has snow" I kind of like the 0 degree for water freezing thing, it reminds me to look out on the road to work.