Dying Star Weaves a Trillion-Mile-Wide Spiral In the Sky

The Bad Astronomer writes "Using the newly-commissioned ALMA radio observatory, astronomers have taken detailed images of one of the most amazing objects in the sky: the red giant R Sculptoris (abstract). As the star dies, it undergoes gigantic seizures beneath its surface that blast out waves of gas and dust from the surface. These normally expand into a spherical shell, but the presence of a nearby companion star changes things. The combined orbits of the two stars fling out the material like a garden sprinkler, forming enormous and incredibly beautiful spiral arms. Measuring the size and shape of the spiral shows the last eruption was 1800 years ago, lasted for nearly two centuries, and expelled enough material to make a thousand earths."

Enough material to make a thousand earths.

[sconeu]

Could someone please put that in more standard units, such as either VW beetles if they're talking about mass, or Olympic-sized swimming pools, if they're talking about volume?

Re:Enough material to make a thousand earths.

[Anonymous Coward]

It's not just base 10, but also has units that are all interrelated. Good luck figuring out how many cubic inches are in a gallon.