We _have_ standardized on Earth circumferences for length, only we divide by 40 million to make the numbers more sane, and got the measurement slightly wrong!

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Ekaros 3 hours ago | parent | next [-]

How hard would it be to fix this? Could we theoretically add or subtract enough material or make whole thing slightly more dense or less dense to compensate?

	▲	jasomill 37 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		Per Wikipedia, the discrepancy is approximately 74 km, so digging a ditch with an average depth of approximately 74/2π ≅ 12 km around the circumference of the Earth would theoretically fix the problem. Feasibility and geological implications are left as exercises for the reader. Regardless, I suspect a more cost-effective fix would be to redefine the meter to be a couple "legacy" millimeters longer.

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crote 5 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

We should just redefine it to make the speed of light a nice even 300.000 km/s - we are so close already!

	▲	jasomill 33 minutes ago \| parent \| next [-]
		Why stop there when we could just as easily redefine it to be 1 (new base unit of length)/second or 1 meter/(new base unit of time)?
	▲	SAI_Peregrinus 4 hours ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		But it's already a nice round 10m/s in base 299,792,458.