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What do you think of the "Sound-Year" as a unit of distance? I'm sure you can discern its definition from its name: the distance travelled by sound after a year at 20 degrees Celsius in air. It seems more useful for intra-solar system differences than the light-year. E.g. the Earth is about 14 Sound-Years away from the Sun. I was personally quite shocked by the size of the Sound-Year when I first encountered it. I expected a Sound-Year to be, at most, the distance between South Nebraska to Mexico City. I thought it would be inter-continental, at most. Its size is definitely suitable for intra-solar system distances. Mercury is about 5 Sound-Years away from the Sun. Isn't that interesting?

Have you tried solar parsecs

>>31501 AU - Astronomical units (The distance from Earth to the Sun) is a perfectly acceptable unit for measuring inside the solar system. The whole point of light year is that it accounts for vast distances, and it uses absolutes (known speed of light) which references the maximum of a tangible unit for measuring.

>>31501 ...I'm pretty sure the speed of sound varies in different mediums, and in different locations on Earth. This would be a really useless measurement as the sound year would just be a vague approximation of the amount of distance it would take sound in some arbitrary location, temperature, season etc to travel for a year

>>31503 While AU is currently a better metric, it is not general, in the (unlikely) scenario where mankind reaches other sun systems and even earth is no longer the center of mankind's activity (or has been rendered completely unfit for human life), another metric would be better..... But as otherposter said, even if temperature is accounted for (20°C acc to OP), the actual configuration of "air" isn't, so it's back to the drawing board.

The speed of sound is not constant, it depends on more than just temperature. The "speed of light" is the speed of light in a vacuum. No similar obvious baseline exists for sound.

>>31506 read the op you glatterboy; op provides a suggested baseline, though he should have added pressure (presumably, 1 atmosphere). Its arbitrary but so what. I like the thought as just an interesting sort of thought excercse. Five sound years is a long ways, but maybe a thousand feet a second isnt actually terribly fast. Just gives an interesting framework for thinking about the world. As far as an easy measure of about how fast sound goes, most big airplanes these days go around mach 0.8-0.9, and the concorde (across the atlantic in ~2 hours) was about mach 2. If a sound year was nebraska to mexico city you'd be making sonic booms just going down the highway, hell, you'd break the sound barrier just walking, there's 8000 hours in a year and only 1500 miles between omaha and mexico city.

>>31502 I cannot find what a "solar parsec" is - only parsecs. Could you explain? >>31505 >even if temperature is accounted for (20°C acc to OP), the actual configuration of "air" isn't, so it's back to the drawing board. True. One would have to measure sound's speed in a more certain medium, like a particular gaseous element or gaseous compound. (>>31504 >This would be a really useless measurement as the sound year would just be a vague approximation of the amount of distance it would take sound in some arbitrary location, temperature, season etc to travel for a year >>31506 >The speed of sound is not constant, it depends on more than just temperature.) You guys are right. I was of the opinion that, if one were to sufficiently control the conditions, measurements of the speed of sound would approach some kind of specific value, much like the speed of light in a vacuum. Unfortunately, I don't think that's possible. Fortunately however, I do have another idea: The "Sound-Year" should be defined as the mathematical prediction of the speed of sound in an ideal gas of a particular gas at a particular temperature. By moving away from the laboratory and towards theory, this would hopefully make the Sound-Year more usable and stable. I'd like to suggest 25 degrees Celsius, but this time, rather than air, I would select Nitrogen as the air is mostly Nitrogen and so the speed of sound in Nitrogen is near to its speed in air. I think, with this revision, the Sound-Year really is suitable for intra-solar system distances. Moreso than the AU as orbital radii are more alien to the human experience than sound.

I enjoy it as a thought exercise but it's not practical. Sonar is interesting, though, and makes the soundyear in less astronomical proportions very practical, but the perturbatives of media and temperature influence don't lend to the preservation of data, as is capable with light. A thought on the matter is using higher end audio equipment to see inside people's houses, as a speaker can also be used as a microphone. Perturbations could be passed through AI to make more exact determinations then the fuzzy imagery already distinctly possible.

>>31509 quantum radar mah nigga Is this thread about establishing a new unit of measure, or applying a unit of measure to some functional application?

>>31514 >applying a unit of measure to some functional application? The latter. Back when No Man's Sky came out, I noticed how there isn't really a way to measure distances objectively. I realised though, since it's a videogame, and you run at a constant speed, you could just use the distance covered by running after a second as your distance unit. I call it, the "running-second." Understanding the light-year, to me, has opened me up to the idea of basically using anything to measure distance, as long as it's a constant. I noticed that we use light to measure distances, but not sound, so yeah, I decided to give sound a go and see what happens. I didn't expect a sound-year to be a freaking inter-planetary distance, but here we are. >>31509 Can you explain how your comments about audio equipment and spying relates to the sound-year? Unless people are using sonar to spy on people on another planet, I do not see the connection.

>>31521 >you could just use the distance covered by running after a second as your distance unit. I call it, the "running-second." this is how most units of measurement came about. Either that or counting the number of parts of the both -- e.g. hand widths, feet lengths, arm lengths, etc. that something takes up. Over time, as construction projects became more elaborate, more-exact forms of measurement became more needed.

why not just use a gigameter? what does the sound year have over that

>>31501 The sound millisecond is nice, it's just a little bigger than a foot.