Over and over in such programs, and not just the Twilight Zone, planets are spoken of as being 200, or 400 million or even a couple of billion miles from earth as if those were a long distances.
Give them six inches, and they’ll take half of that time.
What bugs me is in Star Trek IV when Scottie complains that he’s travelled millions of miles to get to Earth. Sheesh, at least!
Here’s an idea for writers. If you plan to use “light years” in a sentence, first substitute the words “miles” and “days.” If one of them makes sense in terms of meaning, light years will work too.
Examples:
The newest version of the vibrator will be ready miles ahead the competition.
or
The newest version of the vibrator will be ready days ahead of the competition.
Now, I’ll grant there are ways in which either could be correct, since both vibrators could be developed by traveling sex workers in the back of a moving RV, but the second is more likely to be the common usage.
If the length of your dork can be measured in light years, is that soft or hard?
Well, i have trouble believing that the guy didn’t understand your question, especially if he was, as you say, an astrophysicist.
If he seemed confused, it might be because he was thinking, “Who would ask such a purposely obtuse and pointless question?”
As Bricker said, your question was functionally meaningless. Given that light speed is pretty much the universe’s speed limit, and we only have information about distant galaxies based on the light from them that arrives at Earth, it seems perfectly reasonable to talk about occurrences we witness there as happening in the present tense.
Maybe I’m a confused here wouldn’t that statement mean that the only people not allowed onto the 5th floor would be construction workers??
We visited Cylon, once. In 1970. For 20 centons.
Yeah, but you’ll need a twelve-light-year-old kid to coordinate the ansibles.
Confusing the meaning of light-years is the penultimate mistake in sci-fi writing.
Then what’s the ultimate mistake?
That’s totally irregardless.
Yes. That’s what it says. I have chosen not to try to correct the signs I find in my elevators, but some of the suggestions here are tempting.
mischievous
Please, you HAVE to take a camera with you to work tomorrow.
Not long distances? You try doing that commute every day, smart guy.
If you don’t mess with that sign, you’re going to have to change your user name.
Yup. My bad. I’m guessing I just combined a couple of the many anthologies I’ve read. Anyway, my point has been made.
Man, I could sure use about 481,771,358,600,000,000,000,000 amu of aspirin right now.
43?
Did… did you just convert 800 mg of acetylsalicylic acid acid to amu? You, sir, are a loser.
I also am a loser for checking that.
Phhht. Such distances are just down the street.