this post was submitted on 14 Jan 2024
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Does anyone else find themselves recalling random facts for no apparent reason? Like,

Charlie Chaplin entered a Charlie Chaplin lookalike contest and lost

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[–] [email protected] 9 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago) (1 children)

The solar system is ~~99.98%~~ 99.86% (see thread) sun. The rest is comparable to a blood draw from a human.

The earth is a blood smear on a slide.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago) (1 children)

The sun is about 1000 times the mass of Jupiter. You're off a decimal place.

Edit: That in and of itself is a quotable fact. The real number rounds to 1053. So it's about 5% off. It's a meaningless coincidence.

Better ones include that our moon can produce both total and annular eclipses, and (geometrically) all the other planets fit between the earth and moon, but not by much.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago) (1 children)

Not a decimal place, a tenth of a percent. The sun is 99.86% of the solar system.

Wikipedia has a fine pie chart featuring Jupiter and Saturn (which is 90% of the Solar System mass not in the sun)

0.14% of a 90KG human is still only 126ml so still about a blood draw.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago) (1 children)

The proportion is about 0.998, and the parent post had it at 0.9998. You move the decimal point by adding 9s. There was one too many. It was off by a decimal place.

Whether you would call that "off by decimal place" or not, it is certainly larger than being off by "a tenth of a percent". That would mean the error bars of number 0.9998 ± 10% [edit: oops, did i miss a decimal place there. i'll leave it] would just close the gap.

I like the proportion of the smear, aka, the whole point of your post. I never heard it in those terms. It reminds me of the one where if the earth were a basketball, the moon would be a tennis ball about 9 feet away. I'll calc out the percent errors if anyone cares.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 7 months ago (1 children)

Eh. It's fixed now. I appreciate the data correction regardless.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 7 months ago

Yeah, come to think of it, "moving the decimal" is wrong too. There must be a term for moving the decimal in the "one minus x" complement.