this post was submitted on 26 Oct 2025
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Science Memes

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[–] jumperalex@lemmy.world 34 points 4 weeks ago (15 children)

Not arbitrary.

Since 2019, the meter has been defined as the length of the path traveled by light in vacuum during a time interval of ⁠1/299792458⁠ of a second, where the second is defined by a hyper-fine transition frequency of caesium.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metre

[–] verdare@piefed.blahaj.zone 112 points 4 weeks ago (7 children)

I mean, that is pretty arbitrary. The reason the divisor is that specific constant is because we already had meters before we knew the speed of light.

[–] FinalRemix@lemmy.world 18 points 4 weeks ago (4 children)

Then it's lucky the numbers line up as well as they do, no?

[–] Morphit@feddit.uk 14 points 4 weeks ago

299792458? That's amazing; I've got the same combination on my luggage!

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