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caught up on last few pages and got a few questions that need answered.

When did Pluto stop becoming a planet in our solar system?

Ric you made mention of the fact that time slows down when you travel near to speed of light, does this mean that it may be possible if you could find a way of travelling faster than the speed of light that time may stand still and even go backwards?

Even without a flux capacitor?

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caught up on last few pages and got a few questions that need answered.

When did Pluto stop becoming a planet in our solar system?

Ric you made mention of the fact that time slows down when you travel near to speed of light, does this mean that it may be possible if you could find a way of travelling faster than the speed of light that time may stand still and even go backwards?

Even without a flux capacitor?

Pluto was reclassified as a dwarf planet in 2006.

As for the speed of light thing:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cherenkov_radiation

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It's the biggest thing in the, well, universe, so let's fucking discuss it.

I'm an utter space geek and I'm not ashamed to admit it.

What things about the cosmos do you particularly dig, fellow forummers?

I love the sheer mind blowing scale of it. I love it's extremities, such as Gamma ray bursts, supernovae, Pulsars, Neutron stars, hot Jupiters, the lot.

Share your love of space, chums.

Yeah great subject. Always loved space and one time I was in north Thailand out trekking when the Leonids arrived. Amazing. :)

Edited by CambCelt
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It was in 1999 when we were out from Chiang Mai in the 'jungle' and it was awesome. We did not have electricity out there so no lights. The sky was amazing you could see the milky way and then we got the Leonids. Incredible - ..... I was on my back on a bamboo bench looking up after we had some of the local 'moonshine' brew ... :)

Edited by CambCelt
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On the point of creating an engine or vehicle to go faster than light, other than the problems Ric alluded to, as I said earlier in the thread, to get an object the size of a bowling ball up to 99% of the speed of light would take all the energy used on Earth in a week.

I read somewhere that faster than light travel would be theoretically possible by creating a wormhole behind and in front of your spaceship. In order to do so you would have to convert all the matter in a galaxy into energy, as in e=mc2, which could make genocide seem like accidentally nudging someone in Tescos.

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I read somewhere that faster than light travel would be theoretically possible by creating a wormhole behind and in front of your spaceship. In order to do so you would have to convert all the matter in a galaxy into energy, as in e=mc2, which could make genocide seem like accidentally nudging someone in Tescos.

To the best of my limited knowledge. rather than travelling faster than light, using a wormhole is simply bending time and space.

Think of it as two points at opposite ends of a bit of paper. If you fold the paper over you can greatly narrow the distance between the dots, and your wormhole would bridge that shorter gap.

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To the best of my limited knowledge. rather than travelling faster than light, using a wormhole is simply bending time and space.

Think of it as two points at opposite ends of a bit of paper. If you fold the paper over you can greatly narrow the distance between the dots, and your wormhole would bridge that shorter gap.

If you reach your destination in less time than it would take light, it doesn't matter why, you've travelled faster than the speed of light. Bending space is no more cheating than turning a sail.

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If you reach your destination in less time than it would take light, it doesn't matter why, you've travelled faster than the speed of light. Bending space is no more cheating than turning a sail.

But it's not actually travelling from point a to point b at a speed greater than that of light.

It's using a shortcut to lessen the actual distance involved. So rather than the 4.3 light years to get to the closest star to us, you could do it in a wormhole that's theoretically a couple of thousand miles long, for arguement's sake.

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If I could buy a ticket for a bus from Inverness to Edinburgh that would do the journey in 20 minutes, I wouldn't complain if they had to turn Fife and Perthshire into a Curlywurly to achieve it.

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If I could buy a ticket for a bus from Inverness to Edinburgh that would do the journey in 20 minutes, I wouldn't complain if they had to turn Fife and Perthshire into a Curlywurly to achieve it.

Not so much a curly wurly more bringing two rolos closer together.

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Morning troops.

How about a little information on my favourite star, Betelgeuse?

Betelgeuse is a red supergiant and is one of the most recognisable stars in the sky, as you can it's reddish-orange colour with the naked eye. It's the top left star in the Orion constellation so pretty easy to spot.

It's around 600 light years away and is a big fucker. If it were where our Sun is now, it's surface would extend out beyond the asteroid belt, possibly beyond Jupiter, and would engulf Mercury, Venus, Earth and Mars.

Betelgeuse is also dying. For it's size class, it's already pretty old and could go supernova any time now. It could even have went supernova in the last few hundred years, but because the light takes around 640 years to reach us, we haven't seen it yet. Chances are though, it'll go sometime within the next 100,000 to 1,000,000 years.

When it does go supernova, it's brightness will increase by thousands of times and will be as bright in our sky as the moon for days or even weeks. It will be visible during the day and will cast shadows at night.

Here's a picture I took of it yesterday:

Antares-y-Betelgeuse.jpg?cda6c1

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To the best of my limited knowledge. rather than travelling faster than light, using a wormhole is simply bending time and space.

Think of it as two points at opposite ends of a bit of paper. If you fold the paper over you can greatly narrow the distance between the dots, and your wormhole would bridge that shorter gap.

thats not how it works in stargate :P

the wormhole they used travels subspace, hence the "less than 1 second" travel time between gates :D

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The actual substance of space interests me in that while it may seem empty, it must have some kind of properties for things to exist in it or interact with it. If the universe is expanding, what it happening to the space itself? Is it increasing in volume and that's what causes the universe to expand? Or is the space itself is getting stretched? Is there a differnet kind of space outside the universe?

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