I hate the fact that this statement is compulsory for every mass media article about astronomy. Anyone interested enough in the subject matter already knows what a freaking light-year is. And if an occasional stray wanders in, he or she is welcome to look the term up in a dictionary.
I want to give these reporters two choices. Either they can drop this superfluous line, or they have to strictly define every unit of measure they use. Example:
Hey, they’re just trying to be informative, right?
OK, if I said, my galaxy is 190 mega parsecs away, would you have any idea what a parsec is? Its all well and good ranting about how everyone who’s interested should know what a light year is, but then, by that note, people who do have an interest, but aren’t au fait with all the terms, would be put of instantly.
This is not a good thing.
Its good that CNN is doing its bit for the public understanding of science. Let them appeal to the layman, its the only way more interest in science, and hence more funding, will be generated for “pure” sciences.
NOTE: This is a subject very very close to my heart. I am an astrophysicist, in fact, I work in the same field as Prof Fabian (quoted in the article), and when I see things that excite us, within the astrophysics community, portrayed to the public in a simple, yet non-patronising manner, it makes my heart glad.
For some reason, I am reminded of the ruler my dad used when he’d go fishing. It was wooden, maybe 6 inches in length, but marked off to look like it was actually measuring 12 inches.
I whole-heartedly agree with the second part of your statement about generating mass appeal, although I confess I can’t recall the last time I thought the inclusion of a definition succeeded in “sexing up” a news story.
At the same time, I just don’t buy the notion that budding astronomy enthusiasts will run screaming from well-known terms like “light-year.” Obscure terms? Maybe, maybe not.
ASIDE: George Lucas would certainly have failed your parsec pop quiz, despite the fact that he used this term in one of his movies. The movie never attempted to define the word (which is probably for the best ), and last I heard, that movie did okay at the box office.
I have to agree with Angua. Even for those who do know what a light-year is, having it translated into another, more familiar, unit right there in front of you can more effectively portray the extreme distances we’re talking about, here.
Just because I feel like showing off, I’ll mention that I work at the operations control center for the Chandra X-ray Telescope referenced in the article. :> There’s about a 50% chance I put together the schedule for the observations they took the data from. Chandra’s public website is here, if anyone wants any more info on what the satellite has done.
What you’re saying makes sense. I think it would have been better, then, to say, “The sound waves are emanating from the Perseus Cluster, a giant clump of galaxies some 250 million light-years (2,370,000,000,000,000,000,000 km) from Earth.” That bit about what a light-year actually is is unnecessary, because it’s in any dictionary. On their website, they could even put hyperlinks to definitions of buzzwords that would not interfere with the flow of the article.
Cool. I work at the CfA. I’m not into X-ray observations, so I’ve never worked with Chandra data, but there are a lot of posters for it on the walls.
Just curious, how long would it have taken sound waves to reach us from the Perseus Cluster? Just short of forever, right?
And as to the OP, while it doesn’t add much for me on the distance of a light year, I wouldn’t know the mileage figure off my head (although I could calculate it). It also wouldn’t bother me if they omitted it from the article, nor reduce my understanding as a non-astronomy geek. I do have to admit, however, that I was fascinated to learn the 1000 paces by a Roman Legion thing about a mile, and the length of Bruce_Daddy’s penis.
