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  2. Distance - Wikipedia

    en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Distance

    The Euclidean distance is the length of the displacement vector. The displacement in classical physics measures the change in position of an object during an interval of time. While distance is a scalar quantity, or a magnitude, displacement is a vector quantity with both magnitude and direction. In general, the vector measuring the difference ...

  3. Astronomical unit - Wikipedia

    en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Astronomical_unit

    The astronomical unit (symbol: au[1][2][3][4] or AU) is a unit of length defined to be exactly equal to 149,597,870,700 m. [5] Historically, the astronomical unit was conceived as the average Earth-Sun distance (the average of Earth's aphelion and perihelion), before its modern redefinition in 2012. The astronomical unit is used primarily for ...

  4. History of the metre - Wikipedia

    en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_metre

    An early definition of the metre was one ten-millionth of the Earth quadrant, the distance from the North Pole to the Equator, measured along a meridian through Paris.. The history of the metre starts with the Scientific Revolution that is considered to have begun with Nicolaus Copernicus's publication of De revolutionibus orbium coelestium in 1543.

  5. International System of Units - Wikipedia

    en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_System_of_Units

    The distance travelled by light in vacuum in ⁠ 1 / 299 792 458 ⁠ second. kilogram [n 1] kg mass: The kilogram is defined by setting the Planck constant h to 6.626 070 15 × 10 −34 J⋅s (J = kg⋅m 2 ⋅s −2), given the definitions of the metre and the second. [2] ampere: A

  6. Parsec - Wikipedia

    en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parsec

    Imagining an elongated right triangle in space, where the shorter leg measures one au (astronomical unit, the average Earth–Sun distance) and the subtended angle of the vertex opposite that leg measures one arcsecond (1 ⁄ 3600 of a degree), the parsec is defined as the length of the adjacent leg.

  7. Unit of length - Wikipedia

    en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unit_of_length

    A ruler, depicting two customary units of length, the centimeter and the inch. A unit of length refers to any arbitrarily chosen and accepted reference standard for measurement of length. The most common units in modern use are the metric units, used in every country globally. In the United States the U.S. customary units are also in use.

  8. Light-year - Wikipedia

    en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Light-year

    A light-year, alternatively spelled light year (ly or lyr[3]), is a unit of length used to express astronomical distances and is equal to exactly 9,460,730,472,580.8 km (Scientific notation: 9.4607304725808 × 10 12 km), which is approximately 5.88 trillion mi.

  9. Distance measure - Wikipedia

    en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Distance_measure

    Distance measures are used in physical cosmology to give a natural notion of the distance between two objects or events in the universe.They are often used to tie some observable quantity (such as the luminosity of a distant quasar, the redshift of a distant galaxy, or the angular size of the acoustic peaks in the cosmic microwave background (CMB) power spectrum) to another quantity that is ...