Talent-Mile system (a human-scale version of the univers's intrinsic units) has been discussed here occasionally since November 02 and I've noted some remarkable fortuitous hits, chance coincidences that make the system extra nice to use.

Another such hit has come up.

Cosmologists think the universe is roughly 2/3 dark energy and 1/3 dark matter---more detailed catalogs say some 65 percent dark energy and 30 percent dark matter and 5 percent *our* kind of matter. Ordinary radiation (light) also makes a contribution but it is percentagewise tiny.

It cosmology the most important energy density you can describe or try to explain is that of dark energy (the 65-70 percent of the whole ball of wax).

In talent-mile terms that density is one tenthousandth of the unit density. (Another nice coincidence is that the energy density of sunlight at this distance from the sun is TM unit energy density.)

Some uncertainty---a good recent estimate is
1.3E-4, or if you write it out 0.00013.
But as a rough-and-ready approximation, one tenthousandth ocmile per cubic mile.

The basic system definitions, unchanged since around 1Nov02, depend on a technical minute of 54 ordinary seconds----exactly 90 percent of the ordinary minute. No reform of time-telling is proposed, one continues to use the conventional units of time hoursminutesseconds but has one additional unit available for optional use in certain technical contexts such as problem-solving. The definitions, which I will summarize, lead to a mile of 1618.88 meters and a talent mass unit of 21.73 kilo, these being approximately equal to power-of-ten scale-ups of the the Planck units. The corresponding force unit (oc = talent mile per sq.minute) is about 12 newtons or 2.7 pounds and the ocmile is 4.7 food Calories, i.e. kilocalories. The definitions are logically equivalent to making c, hbar, k, e, and the Avogadro number take on exact power-of-ten values.

c = E7 miles per minute
hbar = E-40 ocmile minute
k = E-25 ocmile per grade
mole = E23 items
e = E-23 charge unit

With these definitions, G = 1.00E-15 cubmile/sqminute per talent.

TM BENEFITS FROM A BUNCH OF NICE COINCIDENCES, HERE IS
A SAMPLING INCLUDING THE RECENTLY NOTED ONE ABOUT DARK
ENERGY
Since the earth's average orbit speed is about one tenthousandth of c, it turns out to be 1000 miles a minute.

In much of the earth's atmosphere (a deep layer above convection, with roughly constant temperature) sound goes 10 miles a minute, though 11 is typical for room temperature air.

A thousandth of a mile is classically a pace and a thousandth of a cubic pace is gallon-sized, and so serves as the talent-mile gallon.

The earth's average density is slightly over one talent per gallon.

At human body temp and standard sealevel air pressure the molar volume is one gallon. A gallon-sized lungful of air contains E23 air molecules.

A cubic mile of space near the earth contains E23 photons of sunlight---a mole of sunlight.

The talent-mile charge unit is a mole of electrons.

The talent-mile eevee is E-23 ocmile. That is, the standard energy unit is a mole of electron volts.

The talent-mile power unit---ocmile per minute---is close to half a horsepower and is called pony. In metric terms a pony of power is about 360 watts.

The intensity of sunlight at this distance from the sun is E7 ponies per sqmile.

The sun's power output is E24 ponies.

The average energy of a quantum of sunlight is E-23 ocmile. This also equals the talent-mile eevee.
Quantum energy of one electron volt corresponds to the
(angular format) wavelength of 100 nanopace. [may have to use prefixes of scale like nano, pace is 1/1000 of mile]

A cubic mile of sunlight at this distance from the sun contains one talent-mile unit (one ocmile) of energy. That is, sunlight has the *unit energy density* in these units.

Now it turns out that the most important energy density in the universe---for its longterm development and eventual fate---is one tenthousandth of this.

It is like this---c is the most important speed in the universe and the earth's speed just HAPPENS TO BE A tenthousandth of that as if the universe wanted to make it easy for us so if we tune the units so light goes ten million miles a minute then earth goes one thousand miles a minute and its as simple as that.
but now it turnsout that something like that happens in ENERGY DENSITY TOO. The universes most important energydensity is that of dark energy and the one that matters most to us earth creatures is related to it by that same factor of ten thousand---sunlight energydensity is ten thousand times that of the dark.

Weight chart

Talius--------3 talents
A2rico--------4.7 talents
Leonard--------4.03 talents
Mass of dark energy in cubic mile---E-18 talent
B.hole center of MW---2.4 E35 talents

We should keep track of masses of things---at least a sampling. I have been bicycling a lot lately and my weight has gone down from 4.1 to 4.03 talents as of last time I stepped on the scale.

Talius Talentius and A2rico posted their weights in talents at metricsucks, so I've included them in the above chart.

E-18 talent mentioned here is just a billionth of planck mass---said earlier that the density of dark energy is one billionth of the natural mass unit per cubic mile. The dark energy is what causes (1) the universe's expansion to accelerate by the observed amount and (2) provides 70 percent of the mass needed for the universe to be flat and the sum of angles in a triangle to be 180 degrees.

THE HOLE AT THE CENTER

The European Southern Observatory has taken pictures of a star whipping around a massive unseen object at MilkyWay galactic center. In talent-mile terms what they determined for the angular period is 1.4 million minutes and the average distance (half the ellipse's long diameter) is 78 billion miles.

78E9 miles
1.4E6 minutes

distance cubed over time squared is

(78E9)^3/(1.4E6)^2

2.4E20 cubmile/sqminute

Because talent-mile G is nice, each cubicmile over squareminute unit is worth a quadrillion (E15) talents.

So the mass of the black hole at MW center is
2.4E35 talents.

Also because talent-mile c is nice, the size of the black hole itself can be told immediately from the calculated 2.4E20 cubmile/sqmin.

The halfradius of the hole is 2.4E6 miles. You just have to divide by the square of the speed of light which is E14 sqmile/sqmin. Dividing 2.4E20 by E14 gives 2.4E6---2.4 million miles.

For comparison, the mass of the sun (easy to calculate in T-M) is 93E27 talent. The 93 should
remind you of the 93 million miles to the sun because the sun's mass is calculated from that.

So this thing in the MW center is a black hole with a halfradius of 2.4 million miles or a radius of about 5 million miles and the people at European Southern can actually take pictures of this star looping around a massive invisible thing.

MORE ABOUT DARK ENERGY

BTW a cubic mile contains E-18 talent of dark energy (quantified as mass) and that corresponds by E=mc^2 to E-4 ocmile, one tenthousandth of an ocmile.
The correspondence is easy because c^2 in TalentMile is just E14 and multiplying E-18 by that gives E-4. So the density can be expressed either as mass---E-18 talent per cubmile---or as energy---E-4 ocmile per cubic mile: one tenthousandth.

There are different schools of thought regarding the dark energy---some say it is a constant throughout all space and time corresponding to Einstein's cosmological constant and reflecting the quantum field energy of the vacuum---others say it arises from an undiscovered particle called "quintessence" and that it can vary some albeit comparatively slowly. The observed *amount* (2/3 or 70 percent of universe) is not at issue because several different approaches give the same answer. But what it *is* and whether it is really constant is very much an issue. If you google [cosmological constant quintessence] you get bunches of excited papers
with different views of the dark.

The prevailing picture of the origin of the universe suggests that at large scales space is not curved and observations of the microwave background confirm this.

In a flat universe without dark energy the age must be 2/3 times 1/H. If the Hubble time 1/H is 14 billion years or 8E15 minutes then the age of the universe must be 2/3 of that. And in fact the Hubble constant has recently been measured with unprecedented precision and one knows that the Hubble time is 14 billion years.

A few days ago A2rico or pint drinker pointed the 2/3 out and mentioned the Einstein-DeSitter model. Can't remember which person it was---I was not getting so technical at that point as to say Einstein-DeSitter.

Notice that 2/3 of 14 billion is already too short---there are star clusters older than that.

However it was recently discovered that about 0.7 of mass of universe is dark energy. For a flat universe there is a formula for adjusting the age. You take sqrt of 0.7, which is around 0.84 and plug that in and it gives the factor for adjusting the age. I will show you the formula in a moment but first: the factor comes out 1.45.

So the age is not 2/3 of Hubble time, instead it is 1.45 x 2/3 of Hubble time. That is 0.97.
Therefore the age is almost the same as the Hubble time. If one is about 14 billion years then the other is about 14 billion years. And that IS compatible with star ages and all the other handles we have on the age of the universe.

The reason for the adjustment is that dark energy in the past will have tended to accelerate expansion or prevent deceleration to some extent. Since there was less deceleration, past expansion must not have been as rapid as one would otherwise suppose. So the universe has TAKEN LONGER to expand to present size and so is OLDER (in this case by 45 percent.)

Here then is the formula giving that 1.45 factor

[ln(1+0.84)- ln(1-0.84)]/(0.84 x 2)

Because of uncertainty in the figure of 14 billion years---some people say 13-14 billion---it is not possible to be highly precise and so one just says that both the Hubble time and the age of the universe are about 14 billion years,
since they are within a few percent of each other.

It is amazing that the density of dark energy should turn out to very close to ONE TENTHOUSANDTH of the energy density of sunlight at earth.

The sunlight in a cubic mile of space, at this distance, is one ocmile. The dark energy, which is now accelerating the expansion of space and which appears to be uniformly distributed throughout space---one tenthousandth of an ocmile per cubic mile.

A guy I took or audited several courses from turns out to have been on the HighZ Supernova Search team that found the supernova evidence in 1998 for the dark energy and helped set off the current revolution in cosmology. Always working on research proposals so he could get time on the Hubble Space Telescope get time on the Keck on Mauna Kea. Observational astronomy is highly competitive--if you need to use the best instruments--but also obviously very exciting.

Does anybody know the mechanism of Type Ia supernovas and why they're always a standard size of explosion? (Unlike some other supernova classes which can make different size explosions.) This is what let them judge the distances to the galaxies that were having supernovas, and then compare that distance to the redshift. it is interesting how and why the stars blow up.

In Talent-Mile units, because the charge unit is a power of ten times the electron charge, we have a volt which is 1.2 conventional volts.
Big deal, car batteries are 10 volts instead of 12.

A nice coincidence that happens is that our electronvolt energy unit (which is 1.2 of the conventional) corresponds by chance to the average photon energy in sunlight.

So when you go outside and see the light and feel it warming you, you can remember it is average one eevee

And because all the conversion factors in TM are powers of ten (the system is totally decimal rather than only partially like metric)
that 1 eevee energy corresponds to round number (angular) frequency and wavelength.

energy---1 eevee
frequency---E17 per minute
wavelength---100 nanopace

I am trying to keep the non-essential verbal baggage to a minimum. Metric has the word "Herz" for "per second" so it can say "Gigaherz" and
"Teraherz" and so on.
But TM can so far only say E17 per minute.

I will show a little metric garbage just for comparison. As always, freq and wvlngth are consistently in angular format.

energy---1 eV
frequency---1.5192676E15 per second
wavelength---197.32696 nanometer

the relation between frq and wvlngth is as usual not clear and the 1 eV does not correspond to anything as interesting as the avg energy of sunlight, but anyway there is the garbage. There is an infinite supply of metric ugliness, all yo could ever want for use in such comparisons.

The atomic mass unit is 1/13 x E-27 talent.
And since Planck mass is E-9 talent that means
the amu is 1/13 x E-18 of the natural mass unit.
Thats what a proton or neutron mass is on nature's scale.

You use the amu to calculate lots of things---the weight of an air molecule (29/13 x E-27). Or the speed of sound in air of some temp. Or the decline of temp with altitude---socalled lapse rate. Or the moles in a gallon of water. Or the heat capacity of some weight of iron. Or the drop in pressure with altitude. Endless stuff. You also use it to calculate the mass that causes supernovas to blow.

The reciprocal of 1/13 x E-18 is 13E18. Try this:

(pi/4) x (13E18)^2 = 1.32 E38 and that is the Chandra limit---the mass that triggers supernovas---expressed in terms of the planck mass.

Since talent is E9 planck mass, the chandra is
1.32E29 talents. That is 132E27 and the solar mass is 93E27 talents, so it tells you the sun is below supernova threshhold. And it doesnt happen until the end of a more massive stars life anyway.

(pi/4) x (13E18)^3 = 1.73 E57 and that is the Chandra limit---the mass that triggers supernovas---expressed in terms of amu.

In a type ONE-A supernova the star is all carbon and oxygen (fusion having gone that far and then stopped) and the mass is right at the Chandra limit. the C and O suddenly fuse to Chromium, Nickel, Iron etc.
Half the mass undergoes sudden fusion.
How much energy is released?

Its basically readable from the periodic table that the mass per heavy particle (per prot/neutron) in carbon-12 is 1.000 amu and the corresponding mass in iron-56 is 0.9988 amu.

[Mass per "heavy" has a minimum around iron, so lighter atoms can fuse *up to* around iron---but no further without incurring an energy cost---and heavier ones can fission *down to* around iron.]

Massive stars end up with iron cores. In less massive stars fusion is less complete and can stop, for example, with a core of carbon. A supernova of type ONE-A begins with dead carbon white dwarf of nearly Chandra mass. It accumulates extra material from the wind of a partner and when it reaches the Chandra mass threshhold it collapses suddenly---fusing about half of the Chandra mass.

Fusion from around carbon to around iron means 0.0012 of that half is lost,so 0.0006 of the whole mass of the star is converted to energy.

The previous post showed the Chandra mass to be (1.4 solars which is) 1.3E29 talent.

0.0006 of that mass is 7.8E25 talent and this is how much gets converted to energy.

By Mc^2, *one* talent converts to E14 ocmile, because the speed of light is E7 and you square it.

SO THE EXPLOSION RELEASES 7.8E39 ocmile.

Now a good old redneck short ton of TNT traditionally yields 200,000 ocmile, and dividing by that gives 4E34 tons TNT equivalent.

I've seen a figure on the order of 4E28 megatons, for this type of supernova, so it looks like we came in close enough, in a rough sort of way at least. But this needs confirmation---could be way off and won't know until I do a little more checking around.

At least it gives some sort of handle on that sort of supernova. And is simple to do in TalentMile while
rather messy as usual in metric.

In TalentMile the heats of combustion of things are easy to figure.

"By oxygens I count the heat
released from stuff I burn or eat.
Each Oh-Two molecule sets free
another 3.4 eevee."

When the Hindenburg airship exploded 6May1937 the hydrogen in it was at sealevel airpressure and the temperature that now exists in your ear.

We know this temperature to be 2.19 grade, unless you are running a fever. That is how they take temp now at the doctor's office---by sticking an infrared probe in your ear and reading the glow off your eardrum.
The normal temp, they told me at the office, is 97.9 Fahrenheit and that is 2.19 grade---you convert to metric if you want.

So how much energy did a gallon of burning hydrogen release?

Answer: E23 molecules H2 require 0.5E23 molecules O2. Just multiply 3.4 by 0.5 and get 1.7E23 eevee. This is exactly 1.7 ocmile.

So the Hindenburg released 1.7 ocmile of energy for each gallon of hydrogen gas that burned.

****a previous post, methane, propane etc.*****

> suppose you have a gallon volume of
> natural gas (methane) and burn it, how much
> energy do you get?

> Assuming standard temp and pressure that
> gallon is E23 molecules of CH4. So it
> needs 2E23 oxygen molecules O2 to
> burn.

> The yield is 6.8E23 eevee

> because twice 3.4 is 6.8

And that is 6.8 OCMILES.

(The talent mile energy unit ocmile is roughly 5 food Calories) try doing the comparable stunt in metric and you will be poring over handbooks and busy punching calculator for a while. how many joules heat do you get from burning a liter of methane? if you really know metric you should know that.

> The 3.4 eevee number works with common fuels
> and foods so there is only one number to
> remember.
> It works for potatos, gasoline, jetfuel,
> butane, rice, steak, whatever, you name it.
> Want to know how much energy is derived when
> something is combined with oxygen you just
> count the O2 molecules needed and multiply
> by 3.4 eevee.

> Ask a meterhead how many joules of energy
> are released by burning a liter of methane
> (the corresponding problem) and he will
> probably just
> say duh.

TRY IT FOR PROPANE c3h8
joules from a liter of propane will keep a meterhead busy for a while, but for us it is a no-brainer:
c3h8 takes 5 oxygen molecules to burn (3 to make co2 and 2 to make h2o) and 5 times 3.4 is 17
SO A GALLON OF PROPANE GIVE YOU 17 OCMILE of heat.
You can easily convert to food Calories if you prefer, and again its because a gallon at standard conditions has E23 (10**23) molecules.

Actually i calculate 1001.50276693 mile/min acc to the 54 sec minute and 1112.78085215 mile/min acc to the 60 sec minute. Not bad. And these are statute miles. Your Planckian miles would thus yield a figure of 995.603422699 mile/min, assuming that mile to be 1.61888 km in length. Thus it would appear that the old statute mile might actually be superior to the Planckian mile in this particular regard of the 54 sec minute. Why the 54 sec minute? Is its purpose that of "giving" us an orbital speed of ~1000 mile/min? I know there certainly exists method to the madness!

Pintdrinker you have hit on one of the most interesting things about Planckian units! there is a natural time unit built into the universe and this unit is a very brief instant. the US gov site gives it as 5.4 E-44 seconds.

Or more precisely 5.3906 with an uncertainty of 1/13 of a percent involved in the measurement. You see it is difficult for us to pin it down---a thirteenth of a percent of imprecision is not as good as many other constants are measured.

Anyway if you google [fundamental constants] you will probably get
http://physics.nist.gov/cuu/Constants/

and the first thing on the menu there is "Universal"

so click on universal and you will see Planck Time
as one of the short list of "universal fundamental physical constants".

And whatever it is, if you scale it up by E45 to make it human-size you will get about 54 seconds.

It will probably be 5.4E-44 second, so if you scale up by E45 you obviously get 54 second.

For my version of human-scale Planck units I have chosen to make it exactly 54 because it does not go over with regular people very well to say 53.906(with 1/13 percent uncertainty).

This is a key thing I must explain in a further post: the Planck units are the units which, if you scale them humansize by powers of ten, make all the basic constants come out to be powers of ten.

Using scaled planck units (with time unit 54 seconds or 54 milliseconds---some power of ten of planck time) will make c be a billion and hbar be E-40 and G come out E-15 or some other powers of ten like that. No other units do it. I will repeat this more carefully in a second post.

One approach to understanding this time period is to imagine one had never heard of the natural units but simply wanted to make the main natural constants (G,c,e,k,Avogadro N, hbar, etc) be powers of ten.

It turns out one would be forced to use such a time period or some power of ten fraction like 0.54 second or 54 millisecond.

If one only wants c,e,k,hbar to be power of ten BUT NOT G, then one can have the time unit be anything---it can be one conventional second, or one year, or one hour, or conventional minute, or one millisecond. Anything---as long as one does not care about G.

But if one wishes to make not only c, e, k, hbar all be power of ten BUT ALSO G as well then it puts a lock on the time unit. It is basically 9th Grade school algebra about solving simultaneous equations.

There is a small amount of play because G is difficult to measure and is only known to about 1/13 percent accuracy. So one can scootch the 54 seconds up or down slightly and this scootches the approximation of G up or down and there is (within narrow limits) no really right answer. So one can say 54 seconds instead of 53.906 or viceversa.

Physicists have a convenient way of indicating degree of precision where 1 means exactly one and 1.000 means something approximately 1 out to 3 decimal places. You can be sure that 1.000 is a better approximation than 1.00, or 1.0.

If I would define talent mile using a minute of 53.906 seconds then G would be 1.0000E-15
(the real value would be not known but reliably equal to a quadrillionth out to 4 decimal places, maybe the real value is 0.99997452 x 10^-15 but today the instruments are not accurate enough to tell this)

But I define talent mile using a minute of 54 seconds and this makes G come out to be 1.00E-15
The approximation is actually a little better, perhaps I could say 1.000. But conservatively I just say 1.00.

Sorry if this is too technical or uninteresting. Anyway why should one care about G? Why is it nice to have it E-15 rather than as it is in metric 6.673E-11?

Frankly BECAUSE IN STORIES people are always orbiting strange planets and wanting to know what the planet's mass is. If orbit radius is 100 miles and orbit speed is 2 miles a minute then (distance times sq speed is 400 cubmile/sqminute) and
MASS OF PLANET IS 400 quadrillion talents.

Each cubmile/sqminute is worth E15 talents.

In effect, one is always dividing by G in certain kinds of stories. Dividing by 6.673E-11 is a pain in the neck. Dividing by E-15 is easy and fun. It is the same as multiplying by E15. This is why, ultimately, to have time unit be reduced minute. If you do not like it you are very welcome not to!

*******
Pintdrinker you have hit on one of the most interesting things about Planckian units! there is a natural time unit built into the universe and this unit is a very brief instant. the US gov site gives it as 5.4 E-44 seconds.

Or more precisely 5.3906 with an uncertainty of 1/13 of a percent involved in the measurement. You see it is difficult for us to pin it down---a thirteenth of a percent of imprecision is not as good as many other constants are measured.

Anyway if you google [fundamental constants] you will probably get
http://physics.nist.gov/cuu/Constants/

and the first thing on the menu there is "Universal"

so click on universal and you will see Planck Time
as one of the short list of "universal fundamental physical constants".

And whatever it is, if you scale it up by E45 to make it human-size you will get about 54 seconds.

It will probably be 5.4E-44 second, so if you scale up by E45 you obviously get 54 second.

For my version of human-scale Planck units I have chosen to make it exactly 54 because it does not go over with regular people very well to say 53.906(with 1/13 percent uncertainty).

This is a key thing I must explain in a further post: the Planck units are the units which, if you scale them humansize by powers of ten, make all the basic constants come out to be powers of ten.

Using scaled planck units (with time unit 54 seconds or 54 milliseconds---some power of ten of planck time) will make c be a billion and hbar be E-40 and G come out E-15 or some other powers of ten like that. No other units do it. I will repeat this more carefully in a second post.

Is there any material entity in the universe that can be said (with epistemological validity) to have an age of greater than 14E9 years? We know that there are material objects older than 67% of that amount (~E10 years) but how about greater than the amount itself (viz. >14E9 years)?

Also what has happened to the speeds of spin of the "solar items" since the big bang? Have they sped up or slowed down?

don't wish to be treated as authority on such matters
and there are lots of answers on the web available thru google [age of universe} etc but I will hazard
answer:

[[Also what has happened to the speeds of spin of the "solar items" since the big bang? Have they sped up or slowed down? ]]

The earth's spin is slowing down at a regular and known rate---if you care I can look it up. So slight it hardly seems to matter but astronomers keep track.


[[Is there any material entity in the universe that can be said (with epistemological validity) to have an age of greater than 14E9 years? We know that there are material objects older than 67% of that amount (~E10 years) but how about greater than the amount itself (viz. >14E9 years)?]]

Dammit P.D. this has been a terribly contentious area of controversy for several decades and is only beginning to quiet down. You seem to have a nose for finding unsettled issues. The main things which one could measure the age of that were *seemingly* older than the estimated age of u were the GLOBULAR CLUSTERS of stars. Small puff-balls of like a 100 thousand stars in a spherical swarm. Distributed like a cloud of gnats around our galaxy. Not part of the big swirl but above and below the disc. All these things are very hard to measure and hard to be sure about. But it seems as if the controversy is settling down and most astronmers are deciding that probably the 14 billion is OK and the ages of the oldest things are NOT older than the estimated age of the u.

There was recently announced some investigations of cooling white dwarf stars which COULD have challenged the 14 billion. These star remnants (the size of earth with the mass of sun) are dead but they cool very slowly at a rate that can be estimated and so one can reckon their age. They COULD have found white dwarfs that were older than 13 billion and this would have challenged the age estimate, but the news was that everything is still ok and they didn't. One of those things that gradually increases people's confidence that their guesses are correct.

Should be a website you could go to. Will tell you if I find one. Actually interesting questions and glad you asked.

Not trying to bring these up in any petulent sort of way. Just curious. Interesting what you had to say about. My stockbroker says the same thing: "...you ask questions for which there is no answer". (He keeps losing money and does not know what to do about it. But when i tell him i want to sell out, then he becomes upset!!).