The AM Forum

http://htwins.net/scale2/

Sure puts things in perspective doesn't it! 

Just think, we worry about a half of a db! 

Joe, GMS

Wow, that's quite a piece of software.  This stuff is magic to me.

Some more amazing facts:

If we could truly travel at the speed of light,  (1.0X,  not .99999X), a traveler could go anywhere in the universe in zero time. For example, a photon leaving from the other side of the known universe 13 billion light years away would think it just left when it arrives to the other side. An observer on Earth would see 13 billion years pass, however.  The problem is that a traveler would need to be pure energy to actually hit 1.0X the speed of light. Since we are mass, we could never reach 1.0X the speed of light, only a fraction of it. For mass to reach the speed of light would take infinite energy for propulsion OR the mass turns into pure energy doing it.  (This is the current thinking and is probably incorrect by our limited physics, subject to change)

The distances in space are beyond imagination.  Just to travel to the other side of our own little Milky Way galaxy would take 100,000 years going at the speed of light. (From a stationary person's Earth viewpoint)


IN a billion years, our Milky Way galaxy will "collide" with our sister galaxy, Andromeda. Andromeda is about 2.3 million light years away.  There is so much space between the stars that they will actually pass thru each other but orbits will become distorted due to the tidal gravitational effects and eventually become one galaxy.  Oughta be sporting  to one day look up in the sky and see a massive galaxy as it slowly gets closer over millions of years, until it joins the clouds of stars in the Milky Way.

T

Very interesting...reminds me of the film: Powers of Ten™ (1977) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0fKBhvDjuy0 (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0fKBhvDjuy0)

Terry

I think we would have to step into a device that encodes our bodies into radio energy and beam us to a targeted area. The problem would be to be reconstructed at the receiving end.

Didn't they solve that early in the 22nd century?

With my luck I would have some SlopBucket key up 1 kHZ away and about halfway through the transmission of my encoding sequence. :o

Phil

                    Scottie drinks too much.          

Scale?

Oh crap, I read "Sale of the Universe".

I thought it was too good to be true....

73DG

Check out that giant, really emongus human around 10^10.

Finally got around to opening it on the downstairs (has flash) computer

The IBM, Chas. & Ray Eames 1977 film was pretty interesting too.
37 years ago and amazing confirmations of standard atomic theory including quarks since then.  Super clusters, great attractor, Pluto demoted... tons of stuff discovered in the larger domain too.

What will the next 37 years bring?

Tom, ...about your zero time of photon transit across all known (and unknown distances for that matter.)
..  And therein lies the mystery; Particle, wave duality that loses energy only in wavelength but not in velocity, but is affected by fluctuations in space time, gravity wells for example.  The wavelength for far distances increase because of the expansion of space-time.

A particle that's generated by atomic particle interactions and is annihilated only by atomic particle interaction or transformed into a photon of different energy and wavelength on the other end of what we think of a finite distance.  Does the photon even know or care about our relative distances?  

It's almost certainly less or equal to Plank length in size, but exhibiting wavelength and E/I disturbances in all it passes.  A particle who's upper known energy/frequency in the high gamma is generated by possibly extra-galactic processes we don't understand.
... and a particle who's lower energy/frequency approach absolute zero from several perspectives.

For those who posit that we transfer our selves into photon packets (or hopefully) radio waves, be advised that from our entrance and exit perspectives those waves will still travel at the speed of light, hence a one way time machine into the far future for any distances amenable to such speed. You don't want to go through transformation for a simple cross Earth trip. To much transformation danger? But what a great way to explore inner Earth.

But for those great solar system to extra-galactic sojourns we all dream of..
Yes, you may get there in 'zero' time but you might not like the destination, the last information of which you had at the time you started was already the same number of light time units old to you from that far source..... So, seconds ok, minutes you start to have some problems; years and scores of years, centuries, eons out? ... very iffy.

Meanwhile space-time has expanded so your far future transmitted, detected self now enters the far destination with less energy (longer wavelength) than when it started.

Hmm, several horror Sci-Fi stories could be generated from that one.

"Help meeee... Help meeeeeee..." attains new luster or should I say, lower luster.  ;D

I'm stuck in the world of Lorentz contractions.. haven't fully grasped Einstein's space time yet.  The possibilities are fantastic in what comes after.

oh and a zillion more thoughts...
 uh, oh, for stories I mean.  ;D
 
If you come out on the far end deeply red shifted with all that entails, not just appearance.

What! I just crossed the street.

..and your thirty seconds older and just a tad redder. 
Slowpoke. ;D