Is there a reasonable way to use numbers smaller than about 10^-6

[Earthednet-wp]

FYI,
You may have heard a lot about dwarf planets recently. This new category of celestial bodies was the result of a debate caused by the discovery of Eris. Sedna, discovered in 2003 and also known as 2003 VB12, is most likely a dwarf planet. One reason why astronomers are reluctant to definitively place it in that category is because it is so far away that it is difficult to observe. The object is 90 astronomical units (AU) from the Sun – an astronomical unit is the distance from the Earth to the Sun, which is approximately 93 million miles. Sedna does have a highly elliptical orbit, which means that it ranges from 76 AU to 975 AU.

Read more: http://www.universetoday.com/37479/dwarf-planet-sedna/#ixzz2lCr0zekw

William Prothero
http://es.earthednet.org

> On Nov 20, 2013, at 8:53 AM, Richmond <richmondmathewson at gmail.com> wrote:
> 
>> On 20.11.2013 18:39, Geoff Canyon wrote:
>> I'm calculating gravity across long and short distances. That means I need
>> to deal with the gravity of Earth (~9.8 m/s/s) and Europa (~10^-11 m/s/s)
>> at the same time, and it can get worse than that (Sedna, for example)
> 
> Yeah, Yeah, yeah; and we ALL know what 'Sedna' is, don't we? (that's a tag question, grammar fans).
> 
> Anything beyond Neptune is generally beyond my ken.
> 
> Richmond.
> 
>> Ordinary math seems to peter out at 0.000001.
>> 
>> This puts 8.100e-13: put format("%1.3e", (1e0)/(1234567890123e0))
>> 
>> So is something like that the best way to go?
>> 
>> gc
>> _______________________________________________
>> use-livecode mailing list
>> use-livecode at lists.runrev.com
>> Please visit this url to subscribe, unsubscribe and manage your subscription preferences:
>> http://lists.runrev.com/mailman/listinfo/use-livecode
> 
> 
> _______________________________________________
> use-livecode mailing list
> use-livecode at lists.runrev.com
> Please visit this url to subscribe, unsubscribe and manage your subscription preferences:
> http://lists.runrev.com/mailman/listinfo/use-livecode