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13.7 個十億光年的浪漫

話說,英國歌手 Katie Melua 有一首情歌《Nine Million Bicycles in Beijing》,其中有一段歌詞:

We are 12 billion light-years from the edge.
That’s a guess.
No one can can ever say it’s true.
But I know that I will always be with you.

不過,科普作家 Simon Singh 說 ,其實我們離宇宙邊界大概 13.7 × 10^9 光年,而且有界定精確的誤差值。Katie 很不好意思,並為此出了個新版本:

We are 13.7 billion light-years from the edge of the observable universe.
That’s a good estimate with well-defined error bars.
And with the available information, I predict that I will always be with you.

天涯海角,都可以很浪漫~~

[via TED Talks – Michael Shermer: Why people believe strange things ]

P.S. 發了文後才發覺題目寫了「13.7 光年」,當然是錯得離譜… 然後就找 13.7 billion 中文怎樣寫呢?看到 子貓 blog 提到「兆」等於 1 billion,但必需先解決究竟文中的 billion 是英式 (million million) 還是美式 (1000 million),而跟據 Age of the universe 其正確的值應為 (13.73 ± 0.12) × 10^9 years,所以應為美式,故題目改為「13.7 個十億光年」… 汗…

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