fascinating numbers

A frequent criticism forced by scientific method is that it cannot accommodate anything that has not been proved.

Ockhams Razor = Keep it simple

This is a paranoid used by William Ockhams in context to “pluralities non est ponenda sine necessitate”….. Which means don’t multiply the entities unnecessarily?

Ordinary people with commonsense ideas are intimidated by this pseudo-science. A teacher who has some good idea of how to teach her children to read is forced by the school system to do it some other way, or is even fooled by the system into thinking that her method is not necessarily a good one.

Another example of this kind is, a parent of bad boys, after disciplining them in one way or another feels guilty for the rest of her life because she did not do the “right thing” according to the expert.


As we deal with astronomy I find it necessary to become familiar with some of the celestial numbers but not the EQUATIONS.

Times (in seconds)

8.6 x 104 Earth rotation time
1.6 x 109 Time between Milky Way supernovae
3 x 1013 Time for evolution of a species
7.3 x 1015 Orbit time for sun around galaxy center
6 x 1016 Time for galaxy to cross a cluster
1.1 x 1017 primeval slime to man time
1.5 x 1017 Ages of Earth and Sun
1.5 x 1017 Uranium-238 half-life
3 x 1017 Sun lifetime
3.8 x 1017 Rough age of the Milky Way
4 x 1017 Rough age of 47 Tucanae
4.1 x 1017 Age of the universe


Temperatures (in deg. Kelvin)

7 x 10-7 Laser cooling of cesium atoms
2.17 Liquid 4He superuid transition temperature
2.726 Cosmic microwave background temperature today
273 Water freezing temperature
311 Human surface temperature
373 Water boiling temperature
506 Paper burning temperature
740 Typical surface temperature of Venus
1811 Melting temperature of iron
5770 Solar e_ective temperature
1.4 x 107 Center of the Sun
5 x 107 Typical gas temperature in a cluster of galaxies
3 x 1010 Center of a supernova.


Distances (in meters)

1.8 Man
8 847 Height of Mount Everest
10 000 Neutron star radius
10 000 typical comet radius
12 000 Typical airliner cruising altitude
3.2 x 106 Length of the Great Wall of China
6.3 x 106 Radius of the Earth
7.1 x 107 Radius of Jupiter
3.8 x 108 Distances to the Moon
7.0 x 108 Radius of the Sun
1.5 x 1011 Earth/Sun mean distance
5 x 1011 Radius of the super giant star Betelgeuse
5.9 x 1012 Pluto/Sun mean distance
9.46 x 1015 1 light-year
4 x 1016 nearest non-solar star to Earth
4.5 x 1016 Rough Crab Nebula radiuses
1.5 x 1018 typical globular cluster radiuses
5.2 x 1018 Distance to the super giant Betelgeuse
6.6 x 1019 Distances to the Crab Nebula
1.2 x 1020 Milky Way characteristic thicknesses
2.4 x 1020 Distance from Sun to galactic center
3.9 x 1020 Milky Way disk radiuses
3 x 1022 Radius of the core of the Virgo cluster
7 x 1023 Distance to the center of the Virgo cluster
1.3 x 1027 Distance to the quasar PC 1247+3406

Velocities (in meters per second)

1.0 x 10-9 Sea oor spreading rate
1.6 x 10-9 Average slip rate of the San Andreas fault
2.0 x 10-8 Grass growth rate
3.0 x 10-6 Typical glacial advance rate
1.3 Human walking speed
25 Car speed
100 Speed of an electric nervous pulse
330 Sound speed in air
600 Fighter jet speed
2 380 Escape velocity from Moon's surface
11 000 Escape velocity from the Earth's surface
29 000 Earth's motion around the Sun
2.2 x 105 Velocity of the Sun around the Milky Way
3.1 x 105 Escape velocity from the Milky Way
6.2 x 105 Escape velocity from the Sun's surface
5.0 x 106 Young (months old) supernova ejecta
2.0 x 108 Escape velocity from neutron star surface
3.0 x 108 Light in a vacuum
Masses (in kilograms)

70 Lower limit to the allowed mass for a Sumo wrestler
1 000 Car
10 000 Tyrannosaurus Rex
1.0 x 1013 Typical comet mass
3.0 x 1014 Typical mountain mass
1.1 x 1016 Superterranean biomass of Earth (ocean organisms are included)
5.3 x 1018 Total mass of Earth's atmosphere
3.0 x 1019 Typical asteroid mass
1.4 x 1021 Total mass of Earth's oceans
7.3 x 1022 Mass of the Moon
5.98 x 1024 Mass of the Earth
1.9 x 1027 Mass of Jupiter
1.99 x 1030 Mass of the Sun
2.8 x 1030 Maximum mass for a white dwarf star
6.0 x 1030 Maximum mass for a neutron star
1.3 x 1044 Rough mass of the stars in the Coma galaxy cluster
1.4 x 1049 Rough total mass in spiral galaxies
2.0 x 1052 Rough total mass of a critical density universe