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Comment Eddington's answer (Score 1) 77

Sir Arthur Eddington gave a more precise answer to a similar question in 1938:

I believe there are 15 747 724 136 275 002 577 605 653 961 181 555 468 044 717 914 527 116 709 366 231 425 076 185 631 031 296 protons in the universe and the same number of electrons.

To save you from counting the digits, that's about 1.57 x 10^79.

Comment Off by a factor of 27 million (Score 3, Informative) 70

Journalists and numeracy; like oil and water: Larry Ellison has indeed moved to the island of Lanai, of which he owns 98% , but it is a 140-square-mile island, not 140 square feet. So it's more than six times the area of Manhattan rather than the size of a small parking space.

Comment The summary has the wrong value! (Score 1) 177

The value given in the Nature article for the reciprocal of the fine-structure constant is 137.035999206(11), which is physicist shorthand for 137.035999206 +/- 11e-9 (i.e,, the last three digits are likely between 195 and 217). The summary is also wrong in stating the result is to the "11th decimal place", there are only nine digits to the right of the decimal point and the last two are uncertain. The "81 parts per trillion" is correct. The errors appear to be from the Quanta article.

Submission + - Component failure in NASA's deep-space crew capsule could take months to fix (theverge.com) 2

schwit1 writes: “Replacing the PDU isn’t easy. The component is difficult to reach: it’s located inside an adapter that connects Orion to its service module — a cylindrical trunk that provides support, propulsion, and power for the capsule during its trip through space. To get to the PDU, Lockheed Martin could remove the Orion crew capsule from its service module, but it’s a lengthy process that could take up to a year. As many as nine months would be needed to take the vehicle apart and put it back together again, in addition to three months for subsequent testing, according to the presentation.”

The alternative approach is to cut metal to get to the part.

Comment Based on a doubtful premise (Score 2) 99

All this conjecture about the identity of "Satoshi Nakamoto" is based upon a premise that is most likely false: That he has (or had) a single identity. The evidence is much stronger that the pseudonym was used by a small group, not a single individual. If people using different methods then come to different conclusions about his "identity", that should be no surprise.

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