Astronomers Fix the Astronomical Unit

you'd think they could have rounded up to 150 gigameters.
if politicians can be SD-conservative, why can't astronomers? we all know that significance is precious and rare...

Interesting point.
If you are going to pic arbitrary number, why not pick an easy one?

I suspect there is a desire to keep all past references to AU meaningful within a small margin of error, so as to not have to translate any written works.
The difference between the new arbitrary number and the prior imprecise one is probably infinitesimally small for the scale of reference AUs are use for.

Rounding it up almost half a million kilometers (quarter million miles) maybe not so much.

I suspect that since it was imprecise in the first place, and used for almost nothing except astronomical reference, preserving existing references in the literature was more important than the ease of writing it down.

Source: http://rss.slashdot.org/~r/Slashdot/slashdotScience/~3/NtGp4vN0844/astronomers-fix-the-astronomical-unit

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