Who's for Light Foot
Created | Updated Oct 5, 2003
For eons now, astronomers have spoken of light years. Their cute idea is that if you travel at very high speed for a rather long time, you will cover a huge distance, so a light year is an appropriate unit for the humungous distances they deal with. This did wonders for the effectiveness of their publicity, as the general public took to the phrase, and "light years away" became a common idiom.
Hardware engineers might consider reversing the idea. If you travel a modest distance at a very high speed, it takes only a fleeting moment to do so. They could easily impress us with how little time their chips need to operate, if that universal but almost incomprehensible unit, the nanosecond, were replaced by the roughly equal but rather more evocative light foot.
The nuclear physicists, in association with astronomers, their partners in cosmological questioning, could reverse this idea again, combining a very short time with a very slow speed to obtain an absolutely miniscule distance. They could then replace Angstrom units by (creature-featured) light foot snails. Although ... on second thoughts, do we really want any more radioactive snails?
However, leaving the snails alone also leaves the valid notion of replacing the nanosecond with the light foot. Who's for Light Foot?
Hardware engineers might consider reversing the idea. If you travel a modest distance at a very high speed, it takes only a fleeting moment to do so. They could easily impress us with how little time their chips need to operate, if that universal but almost incomprehensible unit, the nanosecond, were replaced by the roughly equal but rather more evocative light foot.
The nuclear physicists, in association with astronomers, their partners in cosmological questioning, could reverse this idea again, combining a very short time with a very slow speed to obtain an absolutely miniscule distance. They could then replace Angstrom units by (creature-featured) light foot snails. Although ... on second thoughts, do we really want any more radioactive snails?
However, leaving the snails alone also leaves the valid notion of replacing the nanosecond with the light foot. Who's for Light Foot?
