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Gorfian 8 year s ago
#1 is misleading. The SI unit for speed is metres per second. The speed of light is 299,792,458 metres per second. 186,282 is the speed of light in miles per second. Except for MPH or MPG which have passed into common usage, miles should be abbreviated to Mi to avoid confusion, especially when publishing scientific information.
       
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oldchrome 8 year s ago
Actually, the metric version is 299,792 kps or, kilometers per second.

Calling it by meters would be like the imperial version series measuring in yards or feet. Just doesn't happen that way :)
       
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Gorfian 8 year s ago
Yeah, you probably need to go back to school. You can measure the speed of light in leagues per day if you want to, but it doesn't get away from the fact that the SI unit for distance is the metre and the SI unit for time is the second. Thus, if you measure speed in a scientific environment, it's always metres per second.

If you really want to dumb it down because there are too many digits you would say 2.997 x 10^8 m/s

Kilometres, millimetres, nanometres are derivative units - that's why they have "metres" in their name.
       
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oldchrome 8 year s ago
Sorry. Didn't mean to make you angry.
       
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Gorfian 8 year s ago
Not angry at all. It's the original post that's misleading, not what you wrote. I was only mildly irritated that you tried correcting something that didn't need correcting.

I agree- using Km/s would have removed any ambiguity, but a) the original poster incorrectly used m/s and b) the stuff I already said about SI units.

When you get to those sort of numbers, it doesn't matter whether you use miles, metres, kilometres or inches. The numbers are so vast, you simply can't visualise them.
       
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