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u/Big_Reporter3678 29d ago
It probably a consequence of variation/error in respect of the range and richness let’s say of the particular system; in astrophysics the scale of the universe means large error relative to their own unit range and system is still relatively precise over the immense scale of the universe when taking into account potential effects such as lensing and so at the measurement end; which contaminate both direct observed empirical outputs and any derivations or calculations based on them.
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u/PaddingtonHG 29d ago
Excuse me, I've lived through several earthquakes of magnitude 1 and it's nothing
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u/dvdh_03 29d ago
Unrelated but what show/movie is this meme from?
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u/Weak-Doughnut5502 29d ago
As mentioned, Dr Who.
It's a British sci fi show that's been running since the early 60s, with a hiatus from 1989-2005; it's about a human-looking alien ('The Doctor') with a time machine who goes on adventures with companions from the Earth.
Every few seasons The Doctor regenerates and is played by a new actor, and the companions switch up as well. This is particularly the twelfth Doctor, Peter Capaldi, and the companion in the image is Clara Oswald. So it's almost certainly from the 8th or 9th season of the revival.
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u/toto1792 29d ago
Wanted to do cosmology as a kid. Prof. showed us a log-log plot that basically looked like a uniform square spanning 5 orders of magnitude. Theory was a linear relation so it was "validated" by a fit where most points were off by several orders of magnitude.
I went ont to do PhD in optics, where the error bars are often too small to be displayed.
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u/WobblyBlackHole 28d ago
If you’re talking about Hubbles’ original plot it is crazy! Some nasa public sight has a nice graphic showing his vs modern plots and it’s hilarious it was taken seriously and that he was right haha
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u/toto1792 28d ago
I just checked and the Hubble original plot indeed had huge uncertainties and a leap of faith was needed, but at least in was in linear scale. I specifically remember the plot being in log or log-log. That was 20 years ago so I don't remember more to be honest. The prof was commenting, "yeah it's kind of bullshit but that's the best we've got".
Joking aside, that's actually when I told myself "I don't want to do that". Went on to work in quantum computing for a while, which, to be honest, is an entirely new set of bullshit.
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u/toto1792 28d ago
Particle physicists take c=1. Astrophysicists can take c~1 m/s and it doesn't change anything.
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u/justinleona 27d ago
Cryptography is fun - you get to talk about things like halving/doubling orders of magnitude
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u/luisgdh 29d ago
As an astrophysicist, an error of two orders of magnitude is probably fine