From: doug waud <douglas.waud@umassmed.edu>
"An ounce of gold cannot buy an ounce of time."
What will an *hour* of gold get you?
doug
Well, in General Relativity we often use geometrical units, in which c = 1 and G = 1/8{\pi}. Using c = 3e10 cm/s, and G = 6.67e-8 cm^3/g s^2, we get the conversion factor 1 second = 1.5e34 kg, so an hour of gold would be 5.4e37 kg. An hour of gold would be quite valuable as a gold certificate. Taking actual delivery would be dangerous--- unless you keep it well spread out in a vault with a radius much more that 1 light-hour = 1 trillion kilometers, your fortune will collapse into a black hole. Note: This system of units comes from Sachs and Wu, "General Relativity for Mathematicians". Other authors prefer to set G = 1 and leave a factor of 8 pi in the Einstein field equations. I refuse to argue about it. -- Keith