Changing conventions for units and moving toward standardizing across all scientific fields to the SI units (meters, etc.) is useful, but this article isn't about changing units. This idea of a new set of abstractions for representation and exploration of physics is a much much more powerful idea.
When I first learned special relativity, I remember struggling with my intuition and having to rely on unfamiliar formula to find the answer to even simple problems. The farther one goes in physics the more one has to trust the equations (electo-magnetics, special and general relativity, quantum physics, etc.) and the math itself starts to obscure whats happening. Having simpler representations and more powerful abstracts is an exciting possibility. I saw this again when trying to solve some simply stated problems (e.g. a particle falling off of a frictionless sphere), mathematics like Lagrangians which I didn't know when I first attempted this problem make the solution so much easier.
As an analogy for those that aren't really interested in the mathematics, these ideas are a bit like the jump from algebra and infinite series math to integral calculus. Although, in theory, one could solve many problems of physics without calculus (see for example [1]), the use of calculus immediately opens up a better understanding and the ability to describe and solve more realistic problems (like cars that don't travel at a constant speed).
[1] "Feynman's Lost Lecture: The Motion of Planets Around the Sun" by David Goodstein
When I first learned special relativity, I remember struggling with my intuition and having to rely on unfamiliar formula to find the answer to even simple problems. The farther one goes in physics the more one has to trust the equations (electo-magnetics, special and general relativity, quantum physics, etc.) and the math itself starts to obscure whats happening. Having simpler representations and more powerful abstracts is an exciting possibility. I saw this again when trying to solve some simply stated problems (e.g. a particle falling off of a frictionless sphere), mathematics like Lagrangians which I didn't know when I first attempted this problem make the solution so much easier.
As an analogy for those that aren't really interested in the mathematics, these ideas are a bit like the jump from algebra and infinite series math to integral calculus. Although, in theory, one could solve many problems of physics without calculus (see for example [1]), the use of calculus immediately opens up a better understanding and the ability to describe and solve more realistic problems (like cars that don't travel at a constant speed).
[1] "Feynman's Lost Lecture: The Motion of Planets Around the Sun" by David Goodstein