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If the moon were only 1 pixel: A tediously accurate solar system model (2014)

joshworth.com

71–80 of 273 posts

Re: If the moon were only 1 pixel: A tediously accurate solar system model (2014)

#71
post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would say they're two sides of the same coin. The time it takes for light to travel the universe (which makes communication even with nearby stars essentially impossible) is what makes the universe huge.

Luckily FTL communication isn't actually impossible and special relativity only applies to energy and mass.

I can't tell if you're joking or if you know something nobody else does.

As far as I know, anything going faster than the speed of causality violates causality. So what are you talking about?

Re: If the moon were only 1 pixel: A tediously accurate solar system model (2014)

#72
post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

10,000 years of empty space to get to the next solar system. Exciting.

Plenty of time for reflection on one’s choices in life that put them in that situation.

Especially generation 143 of 330, they can definitely spend their whole life on that reflection.

Re: If the moon were only 1 pixel: A tediously accurate solar system model (2014)

#73
post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I really thought hitting "light speed" would just zoom it all in a minute, but nope... So much for my physics preconceptions.

Well, if you were traveling at light speed you could move anywhere in the universe instantly. If you are an observer on earth, watching an object move away from you at the speed of light, then it will take a very long time to traverse the tiniest regions of the universe.

Er, "instant" here is "relativistic instant."

even in a vaccum, light speed travel from the travelers POV still takes time, and said traveler would perceive time passing exactly as occurring in that local space. But yes you're totally correct, the observer on earth would in this time see only the briefest part of my journey's trail due to light from my journey taking "exponentially" longer to travel back to the observer.

Re: If the moon were only 1 pixel: A tediously accurate solar system model (2014)

#74
post #3

Make sure you press the "c" button in the bottom right. Light is incredibly slow, and everything seems out of reach. I think we'll have a holodeck before we reach another star. And maybe that'll be enough.

> Light is incredibly slow, and everything seems out of reach. Yes, agreed. I find it a little depressing. An unimaginably huge universe, tantalisingly there, but completely out of reach.

Not out of reach if you get very close to light speed. Time would advance very slowly for you, so counterintuitively it is possible to travel 5000ly in your life time.

Although for everyone else at least 5000 years will pass, so better say goodbye to family and friend.

Hm, not sure if that is really less depressing...

Also light isn't slow. A photon instantly travels to the end of time and yet it still takes a few minutes from the surface of the sun to us. Or about 100000 years from the center of the sun to its surface.

Re: If the moon were only 1 pixel: A tediously accurate solar system model (2014)

#75
post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Luckily FTL communication isn't actually impossible and special relativity only applies to energy and mass.

I can't tell if you're joking or if you know something nobody else does. As far as I know, anything going faster than the speed of causality violates causality. So what are you talking about?

> violates causality

But we don’t know that casualty is a law of physics, do we?

Re: If the moon were only 1 pixel: A tediously accurate solar system model (2014)

#76
post #3

Make sure you press the "c" button in the bottom right. Light is incredibly slow, and everything seems out of reach. I think we'll have a holodeck before we reach another star. And maybe that'll be enough.

All of fiction and discourse fails to consider that the Solar System is actually a huge place and just the period of settling and industrialising it will take hundreds of years.

Everyone things that a game breaker technology is better engines, or fusion, or FTL, but they are wrong, the game breaker technology has already happened: 3D printing.

If we can manufacture things with minimal infrastructure using local resources, we can that is all we need.

And all of it reachable with simple nuclear power and technology we have today.

Re: If the moon were only 1 pixel: A tediously accurate solar system model (2014)

#78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Light is incredibly slow, and everything seems out of reach. Yes, agreed. I find it a little depressing. An unimaginably huge universe, tantalisingly there, but completely out of reach.

Not out of reach if you get very close to light speed. Time would advance very slowly for you, so counterintuitively it is possible to travel 5000ly in your life time. Although for everyone else at least 5000 years will pass, so better say goodbye to family and friend. Hm, not sure if that is really less depressing... Also light isn't slow. A photon instantly travels to the end of time and yet it still takes a few mi…

How would that feel as a traveler? Does all motion slow down to a crawl, all sub-atomic particles just "freeze" and essentially your thoughts and body aging too? So it would seem like you got there in an instant?

For sure you're not just sitting there watching people get born, live and die in second and shrugging your shoulders.

Re: If the moon were only 1 pixel: A tediously accurate solar system model (2014)

#79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Light is incredibly slow, and everything seems out of reach. Yes, agreed. I find it a little depressing. An unimaginably huge universe, tantalisingly there, but completely out of reach.

Not out of reach if you get very close to light speed. Time would advance very slowly for you, so counterintuitively it is possible to travel 5000ly in your life time. Although for everyone else at least 5000 years will pass, so better say goodbye to family and friend. Hm, not sure if that is really less depressing... Also light isn't slow. A photon instantly travels to the end of time and yet it still takes a few mi…

But unless you have a way of slowing down again you'll never see anything of your destination, just the briefest of flares of light as you sail past. And if you do have a way that involves anything like physics that we recognise, you've brought along a huge rest mass that then got accelerated to near light speed. Probably your civilization needs to be approaching Kardashev Level 2 to pull this off.

Re: If the moon were only 1 pixel: A tediously accurate solar system model (2014)

#80
post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Luckily FTL communication isn't actually impossible and special relativity only applies to energy and mass.

I can't tell if you're joking or if you know something nobody else does. As far as I know, anything going faster than the speed of causality violates causality. So what are you talking about?

Don't conflate causality and special relativity.

SR breaks down at both ends of the spectrum, at the event horizon of black holes and in Bose Einstein condensates. That proves that it is an emergent property of observations, statistical behavior of decoherent systems, and not a universal law.

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