Light Years for Dummies

Way back in 2011, the search-engine gurus at Google decided that enough is enough: crappy websites filled with poorly-written garbage were getting what they felt was excessively high placement in search results. Consequently, the company released their Panda update to demote the content farms. Facebook and Twitter were given prominence in the algorithm, and the baby was thrown out with the Suite.com, AssociatedContent and Helium bathwater. Unfortunately, eHow.com managed to survive; as did most of the content responsible for the Panda update. Content that we at the Antisocial Network mock on a near-daily basis; content like "What is the Distance of One Light Year?"¹ covered in the grand old tradition of eHow.com by Jennifer Oster.

One of eHow's most insidious "standards" was their minimum word-count rule, imposed because the company's SEO gurus believed that search engines give preference to content 300-500 words long. As a result, Oster found it necessary to pad what should be – at most – a twenty- or thirty-word answer to... wait for it... more that 500 words! And in the process, this certified lactation counselor (a worthy calling of course, but one that apparently requires no general science background) made a mess of it; starting with this inane statement:

"A light year is commonly thought to be a measurement of time, but contrary to popular belief, it is actually used by astronomers to measure very large distances in space..." Really? "...commonly thought to be a measurement of time..."? by whom, Jennifer: your fellow social work degree-holders, the rest of whom also skipped general science electives? Pshaw... and then she goes on to explain that "Kilometers and miles, while used frequently to measure distances on Earth, are too small to use for distances in space...."

Apparently -- and this will eventually become even more apparent -- Oster's never heard of scientific notation. Whatever... Jennifer goes on to explain that

"Scientists have discovered that the speed of light is 186,282 miles per second. You must first find the distance of the speed of light in minutes and days before calculating the speed of a light year."

Well, at least she got the speed of light correct, although she neglected to mention that's when measured in a vacuum. But what's this bullshit about "find the distance of the speed of light in minutes and days..."? Jennifer, you idiot: given the distance light travels in a second, all you need to do to find the distance it travels in a year is to multiply that number by the number of seconds in a year (about 31,536,000). The product of those two numbers is about 5.88 trillion miles; 5.88 x 10¹² miles if you, unlike Ms. Oster, know how scientific notation works.

Moving right along, Jennifer continues to enlighten her readers with headings such as "The Speed of Light in Minutes," "The Speed of Light in Hours" and "The Speed of Light in Days." We kid you not! what Oster actually means is "the length of a light minute," etc.

Jennifer closes this educational piece by informing her readers that

"...if two planets are three lightyears [sic] apart, they'd be approximately 17 trillion miles away from each other. Instead of saying 17 trillion miles, astronomers would say that the planers [sic] three light years apart." We rest our case: two grammatical errors and a math faux pas in the same sentence. Now do you see why Jennifer is our Dumbass of the Day? We thought so...

¹ The original has been deleted by Leaf Group, but can still be accessed using the Wayback machine at archive.org. Its URL was ehow.com/info_8656767_distance-one-light-year.html

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