Earth's circumference mile in the seventeenth century and the metre in the eighteenth. Earth's polar circumference is almost exactly 40,000 km because the metre was originally calibrated on this measurement (1/10-millionth of the distance between the poles and the equator), which is almost exactly 21,600 nautical miles (being defined as one minute of a degree – i.e. 360 multiplied by 60). It has been described as "the single most important measurement" of the Earth, assuming the Earth to be a sphere (the Earth is an technically an ellipsoid, albeit with just 0.3% flattening). Earth's circumference lines are the foundation of the coordinate
Astronomical unit expanding outward from the Sun. This has led to calls to abandon the astronomical unit as a unit of measurement. As the speed of light has an exact defined value in SI units and the Gaussian gravitational constant "k" is fixed in the astronomical system of units, measuring the light time per unit distance is exactly equivalent to measuring the product "G" in SI units. Hence, it is possible to construct ephemerides entirely in SI units, which is increasingly becoming the norm. A 2004 analysis of radiometric measurements in the inner Solar System suggested that the secular increase in the