Discussion: cm

I get the feeling that you astrologers are pretty good at what you do, and that you'd be able to tell if something weird happened, like the Earth moving closer to the Sun, or an increase of 26° in the Earth's wobble.

(Yes, the site is hilarious and labeled 'non-fiction'.)

I've seen some bizarre theories in my field of expertise over time, but that's up there with the best of them.

Are you sure that G is known to a part in 10^5? I'd been under the impression that it was only known about an order of magnitude less accurately, which would appear to be also what Wikipedia lists. I would have thought that if there had been a recent upgrade in our knowledge of the least-well-known fundamental constant in the last couple of years that it would have been talked about enough so that I would have heard about it, but if there have been more recent measurements that have pushed the limit down a lot, I would certainly be interested in a reference!

Nope, I didn't fact-check and the speaker's talk which was definitely too general to be listing refs. I'd go with you're more likely right, Dave's main point in that segment is that G is hard to measure, while GM_sun much easier!

And goodness-gracious to that 'non-fiction'...

Hey, you can't predict Mars' location correctly to within a centimeter.

Not long-term.