08-29-2006, 08:38 AM | #21 | |
Join Date: May 2006
Location: In Dayton with my wife and 4 kids
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Re: Bearings in space
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If this is true, then there is an outer edge, outside of which there is no space. I haven't even tried to wrap my head around that one. For most discussions, I would agree that no point in our known universe is any better than any other for being the origin. If the big bang is science fact, then I think it would make a good origin for a navigation system. On the other hand, the center of one's own galaxy might be better. The scales at which space travel would occur would make the center of the universe too remote. The differences at our distance from it would be too minute to be practical. (Please excuse the stream-of-semi-consciousness here.)
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Corey Young |
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08-29-2006, 10:18 AM | #22 | |
Join Date: Feb 2005
Location: Berkeley, CA
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Re: Bearings in space
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08-29-2006, 10:19 AM | #23 | |
Join Date: Feb 2005
Location: Berkeley, CA
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Re: Bearings in space
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08-29-2006, 10:34 AM | #24 |
Join Date: Oct 2004
Location: San Francisco, CA, USA
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Re: Bearings in space
My understanding (big, big disclaimers in bright neon here) is that it goes something like this: If you map the "location" of the Big Bang in that early Big-Bang-sized universe to the current universe, the "location of the Big Bang" maps to everywhere. So everything is flying away from everywhere, equally, and there is no reference point, and no space-outside-of-space.
Kind of like those "small parallel universes" where great distances in ours map to casual walks in the other universe (a common rationale for FTL travel), only the "small universe" in this case is our early universe, and it was point-sized. I could be totally wrong, but that's the model in my head. |
08-29-2006, 11:33 AM | #25 | |
Join Date: Sep 2004
Location: Upper Peninsula of Michigan
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Re: Bearings in space
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The Universe, then, forms a 3-dimensional "balloon." When the Big Bang happened, the Universe was extremely small, and the Big Bang happened everywhere; there simply wasn't much everywhere. It didn't have a boundary, though, no more than a circle has a boundary (you can walk indefinitely in the circle's one dimension) or a sphere has a boundary (you can walk indefinitely in its two dimensions). Both are finite, but unbounded. That circle does have a center. It's just not anywhere on the circle, and if the circle is all of space, then that center isn't anywhere. |
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08-29-2006, 12:38 PM | #26 |
Join Date: Mar 2005
Location: The deep dark haunted woods
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Re: Bearings in space
To navigate anywhere you need bearings from two or more fixed known reference points. On Earth, that's the Royal Observatory in Greenwich, England and the Equator.
In space, the logical points would be the Galactic Core (the radio signature of Saggitarius A* is easy to locate) and S Doradus (The brightest and most prominent star in the Large Magellanic Cloud, with a very distinctive spectrum). The relative positions of those two would give a rough general notion of where one is located, as well as distance, and could be designated "main markers". Purely "local" prominent phenomena (pulsars, supernova remnants, and anomalous objects) would help fix the position to greater degrees of accuracy. In our galactic neighborhood, Alpha Cygni (also called Deneb) would be one such local marker, as white supergiant stars are rare and it has an anomalous spectrum (heavy iron concentration). So a galactic-scale campaigh would require a eight-place coordinate system - the first two indicating the relative position between Sagittarius A* and S Doradus (flat and inclined plane). The third, fourth, and fifth numbers would be the catalog identification of a local marker and it's relative position from the closer main marker; sixth, seventh, and eighth being the same for another marker relative to the further main marker. With all these numbers, there could only be one location where these objects would be seen at these exact angles. Thus coordinates are fixed. In a "local galactic" campaign, the Core and S Doradus might be too large-scale. In which case only six coordinates need be used; the identity of two markers and bearing from them. In a "local space" campaign (covering only a couple of dozen parsecs), three coordinates showing the bearing and distance from an arbitrary "fixed" zero location is all that is necessary. The small number of stars allow them to be identified by spectrum and relative position. The system used in GURPS SPace 3e is adequate for that. (A coordinate does NOT mean a one-digit number! It can be as many digits as necessary. Or even have letters, in the case of identifying markers.) Hope this helps. |
08-29-2006, 04:37 PM | #27 | |
Join Date: Sep 2004
Location: Upper Peninsula of Michigan
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Re: Bearings in space
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In three-dimensional space, you need bearings to four markers to find your position, which can be marked in three coordinates. In a relatively round, disc-like galaxy, a number of systems can be applied, with the most likely candidates being spherical (two angles from fixed reference lines -- probably convenient bright stars -- and a distance from an agreed central object) or cylindrical (height from a reference disc -- the "galactic equatorial plane" -- radius out projected on that disc, and angle from a reference line on that disc, again probably from a convenient star). |
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08-29-2006, 08:43 PM | #28 | |
Join Date: Nov 2004
Location: The plutonium rich regions of Washington State
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Re: Bearings in space
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Other possibilities involve various ways for the universe to wrap back around on itself (although, it would do this without any curvature), or that the obervable universe sits inside a finite "bubble," outside of which different physics apply (possibly being the hot, dense inflationary "stuff" that prevailed during the first instant of the big bang, or possibly separated from our universe by a boundary known as a "domain wall," which is thought to cut off regions with one type of physics from those with another. Note that when I say that physics is different, gravitation is probably the same but there exist a different combination of particles and the forces that act on them than our everyday up and down quarks, electrons, electromagnetism, weak force, and strong nuclear force). Despite amazing advances in comsology and lots of very clever ideas and measurements, there is still a lot we do not know about the universe. Luke |
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08-29-2006, 08:45 PM | #29 | |
Join Date: Nov 2004
Location: The plutonium rich regions of Washington State
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Re: Bearings in space
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Luke |
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08-29-2006, 11:29 PM | #30 | |
Join Date: Feb 2005
Location: Berkeley, CA
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