On: SpaceX punched a hole in the ionosphere

[eqvinox]

"molecules from the rocket exhaust produce photons at a wavelength of 6300 Å – the same color as red auroras."

Anyone else have this use of Ångström trigger an exception in their brain? The unit of default for wavelength is nm, not Å… (1nm=10Å)

[dguest → eqvinox]

I don't know if there's a "default" unit, but most people I interact with would use SI units (i.e. km, m, cm, mm, micron, nm, pm). Maybe more to your point, 630 nm is the same number of characters and a slightly more familiar unit. Writing a wavelength as 6300 angstroms is a bit like saying a marathon is 421,950 cm.

Anecdotally I've only really heard angstroms used in material science / condensed matter physics, where most small structures are small integer numbers of angstroms across.

[throwaway4837 → eqvinox]

Angstroms are used pretty commonly in molecular/nuclear physics.

[dermesser → eqvinox]

If you look in another field, the default wavelength (wave number) unit is 1/cm. Meaning, there's not really a default wavelength unit.

[samstave → eqvinox]

my trigger is from like the 1980s or 1990s where angstrom was a computer I couldnt afford...