Question for astronomers

[Marvel Frozen]

Dear all,

I predict, in all of my non-astronomer wisdom, that the estimate will curiously keep getting larger and larger and ...

Sincerely,

S. H.

According to some old (30 + years old) astronomy books I have, the accepted age of the universe used to be between 15 and 20 billion years, the current figure is a little less than 15 billion.

 

[Houngan]

Sorry- but my superscripting won't work on this forum.

Is that what scepticism is to you folk? criticizing the other guy's language, since you can't fault his thinking? Everyone who deals with numbers knows the "double star" or the "hat" denote a superscript, i.e., the preceeding number raised to the trailing value. If you prefer, we can also say 10E+09. Take your choice. But don't criticize unless you have established a convention, and made everyone aware of it.


Roger

No, that wasn't skepticism, that was a pedant be out-pedanted. You wanted to get a little jeer in with scientific notation, but then you screwed it up. Nothing worse than correcting someone's grammar and making a typo while you do it.

H.

p.s. It's 1x10e9, not just 10e9.