We are used to arguing about the merits of the Imperial vs Metric systems of measurement.
As we should. Imperial units are clearly superior to the metric system, as is proven by the fact that the Metric system was first adopted by France during the revolution.
Nothing good came out of the French Revolution.
The only country to have reached the moon–the United States, of course–uses the Imperial system. Inches, feet, miles, Fahrenheit, pints, gallons… All the useful units. None of that Frenchie stuff. Too bad Brexit didn’t extend to measurement units. Although the Brits still use “stone” as a unit, and I have no idea what that means.
How many stones did the Saturn V weigh? Who cares. We had the Saturn V, and the UK had Jaguars that couldn’t even start back then.
In any case, when it comes to asteroids the units of measurement are neither Imperial nor Metric. Rather, they are analogies.
An asteroid roughly the size of 14 flamingos flying foot-to-beak is set to skim past the Earth Wednesday, March 1, according to NASA’s asteroid tracker.
But 14 flamingos are probably more dangerous since this won’t hit us.
By @AaronReich | #Space
— The Jerusalem Post (@Jerusalem_Post) March 1, 2023
The “Flamingo” apparently can be translated into meters and by extension feet and inches, but can they be translated into Manhattans, another famous unit of measurement for celestial bodies? I have also seen stadiums, bridges, the Empire State Building, and similar units of measurement.
I assume the Great Pyramid is in there as well.
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Jazz is the resident UFO guy here and he is on vacation, so I can’t ask him about how alien spaceships get measured. By whale? Or White Houses?
I may never know.
Given how astronomers and other scientists often use incomprehensible units of measurement–do you remember how many molecules in a mole there are?–there is something charming about the use of the Flamingo unit.
A mole, by the way, is defined thusly:
The mole, symbol mol, is the SI unit of amount of substance of a specified elementary entity, which may be an atom, molecule, ion, electron, any other particle or a specified group of such particles; its magnitude is set by fixing the numerical value of the Avogadro constant to be exactly 6.022 141 29 × 1023 when it is expressed in the SI unit mol–1.
I hated chemistry. Now you know why. Try translating that into “Flamingos.”
Physics was my science. I loved it. Everything about it, except Electricity and Magnetism, made sense to me. E & M was all Greek to me, which come to think of it was usually true when it came to symbols.
Physics actually does lend itself to using Flamingos as a unit of measurement. The Saturn V weighed as much as X many Flamingos, was X many Flamingos tall, and reached the speed of X many times the Flamingo’s flight speed. The thrust was X times a Flamingo wing flapping, and the distance traveled was X many Flamingo flights.
The Metric system will never be able to incorporate the Flamingo unit of measurement because it is relentlessly rational and rigid. You would never catch a Frenchman using the length of his arm to measure something or use the heel-to-toe distance of a king to determine distance.
Savages.
We Imperials, though, could and should include the Flamingo unit of measurement as a new standard. It fits with our superior mental flexibility, our creativity, and ability to fly to the moon.
I’ll suggest it to Elon Musk, who can inaugurate its use on his first trip to Mars.
