I mean why isnt the tag called “er” since that is the logical word order in the expression “earth radius’s” when abreviated ??!!?!!?! boy oh boy when great bureaucratical minds clank together and collaborate on a standard for naming something, they really like to fuck it up and remove all logic and reason from its naming ?! or is this some reverse latinate language crap getting in the way ? ie “le radii terra” ? whichever way it sucks !
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communique sent to beeb its use of the symbol. “er”

do you know the reasoning behind the earth radii symbol being re rather the er ?

it seems illogical to me ?

especially the way it was used in that bbc article, im sure some insane international astronomical naming council was convened and spent an expensive lunch deciding on it being “re” rather than “er” was it first used in a latinate french context or something ie “le radii terra” a doff of the cap to a first french use of the acronym ? or confusion with other acronyms ? whichever way its seems nuts because re can be confused “re:” or er for emergency room, whichever I personally dont like blatantly illogical things. Or perhaps it was a conflict with mathematicians re its use in algebraical equation and is to the “power of earth” ?

do you know the explanation for it ?

d morgan

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sent a second email before receiving reply lol :
re last email :

im guessing, first use mathematic “to the power of earth size” ? usefull for mathemicians, but a linguistic non sequitur when scanning with an eye for direct abbreviational logic.

apologies if this has disturbed and confused your day.

d morgan

REPLY BELOW from Jonathan Amos himself, must have been a slack day :)

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D

I’m guessing here but… the standard astronomical symbol for this
measure would be a large italicised capital ‘R’ followed by a subscript
circle with a cross in it. I should think someone in Nasa public
affairs has looked at that and thought – probably correctly – ‘who the
hell understands what that symbol means’. So they invented their own
nomenclature. It probably didn’t take a lunch, just 30 seconds by the
water cooler.

J

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so in short we were lucky to receive the RE symbol it could apparently have been much worse scientific astronomical one ? oh well …
or perhaps ? ……… we all need to the learn the real astronomical one ive knocked up my own version below :

and not adopt the plebian, make it easy for everyone, f’up that is “RE”, i mean if your going to make it simpler why not go the whole hog and make it a direct acronym “ER” etc, or just stick with scientific astronomical agreed symbol, at least people would learn something in the process, and can do funny jokes in symbolic form about how many earth radii your momma’s ass is etc.