Platypus tagged posts

From Platypus to Parsecs and MilliCrab: Why do Astronomers use such Weird Units?

A bright, multi-coloured supernova remnant with dusty, wispy filaments and something resembling a tornado (the pulsar wind nebula) in the centre.
Image of the Crab Nebula where red is radio from the Very Large Array, yellow is infra-red from the Spitzer Space Telescope, green is visible from the Hubble Space Telescope, and blue and purple are X-ray from the XMM-Newton and Chandra X-ray Observatories respectively. NASA, ESA, G. Dubner (IAFE, CONICET-University of Buenos Aires) et al.; A. Loll et al.; T. Temim et al.; F. Seward et al.; VLA/NRAO/AUI/NSF; Chandra/CXC; Spitzer/JPL-Caltech; XMM-Newton/ESA; and Hubble/STScI

You may have heard about an asteroid set to fly near Earth that is the size of 18 platypus, or maybe the one that’s the size of 33 armadillos, or even one the size of 22 tuna fish.

These outlandish comparisons are the invention of Jerusalem Post journalist Aaron Reich (who bills himself as “creator of the giraffe...

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