A Nice Illustration of Scale...

[Malenfant]

post deleted.

 

[GypsyComet]

A 1000AU radius ringworld? Eegah!

 

[Valarian]

Originally posted by Malenfant:
There's arguably little point in anything that the Ancients have done .

It's one reason I can't abide them, they're usually just assumed to have screwed around with the universe wholesale for completely random reasons (largely to explain nonsensical UWPs, actually). Once you start saying "the Ancients did it" then all pretense of a realistic universe goes out of the window.

Children must have something to play with, and if the children have the intellects and powers of godlings, then they play with the universe.

 

[mike wightman]

[mod]I've moved this topic to this forum so it can be more easily located in the future.[/mod]

 

[Malenfant]

post deleted.

 

[signless]

I just wanted to thank Mal for his expertise and illustrations. You helped further enlighten my players about the sheer vastness of the backdrop against which we campaign.

 

[Malenfant]

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[RandyT0001]

Originally posted by Malenfant:
just to further boggle, the habitable zone for a star like Antares is somewhere around 300 AU. That's about ten times as far from the centre of the star as the size of our entire solar system out to Neptune!

The orbital period of such a planet would be about 1300 years, longer than the existance of the 3I. If there were planets around it in orbits scaled up from ours that would mean you would have to use the jump drive to go from one planet to the next. It would be like: Earth at 300 AU's, Venus at 210 AU's, Mars at 480 AU's. And since it takes one week to travel 37AU's at 6G acceleration, intrasystem travel would require a jump drive. (I don't think orbits really work like that though.) Even if there was a planet there in the HZ, unless you can predict with certainity when giants are going to supernova, you wont want to settle there.

 

[Malenfant]

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[Pickles]

Speaking of stars 'one the brink' (in astronomical terms, that is):

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/5204676.stm

 

[Andrew Boulton]

"The only problem...is that they have never seen a type 1a close up"

Bloody good job, too!

 

[Mickazoid]

Antares is MY home star (Scorpius). It ain't going anywhere, if I have anything to say about it!

 

[Pickles]

"It could be tomorrow, but most likely it'll be 1,000, 10,000, 100,000 years from now," says Jeno Sokoloski.

I think you'll be alright, Mickazoid.

 

[Malenfant]

post deleted.

 

[dm_dracos]

WOW, thank you, im printing those up for not only my gamers, but some friends for their kids to remind them, that the universe doesnt circle them, lol. it is incredible thinking about it,
THANK YOU, for the reminder how small and VERY important we are
Dracos

 

[Malenfant]

post deleted.

 

[Andrew Boulton]

Is it sad that I know nearly all the words to that?

This is very nice:

http://www.space.com/php/video/player.php?video_id=mm31A_ScaleUniverse&plugin=q

And then there's this:

http://www.planetary.org/explore/topics/space_missions/voyager/pale_blue_dot.html

 

[Plankowner]

Not sad Andrew, I think it shows your great appreciation of talent and humor.

 

[Peter Newman]

"I Remember about 20 years ago, I was in Germany on vacation (I can't remember the exact city we were in), but they had set out plaques on the sidewalks that illustrated realative distances of the planets within the solar system.

These things were all over the city. I remember it being a nice walk. I'm just glad they didn't have interstellar distances represented. - Jim Fetters"

They have one of those in my home town (Anchorage, AK, USA) too. It's pretty cool, although my part of town just has Jupiter and Saturn in it, To see all the other planets I've got to walk a ways. It is designed so that at "a typical walking pace" (undefined) the viewer is going at the speed of light. Therefore 'Earth', which is about 8 light minutes out from the sun is an eight minute walk, from the starting point of the Sun. Looking at the charts on this page & considering that our model if the sun is fifteen or twenty feet across, I can imagine a same scale model of the biggest giants crushing half the town.

Hmmm, where can I get one?

 

[aramis]

Looking at the charts on this page & considering that our model if the sun is fifteen or twenty feet across, I can imagine a same scale model of the biggest giants crushing half the town.

Hmmm, where can I get one?

Boy howdy, makes me glad I'm out in the oort cloud... (I'm about 20 miles from Peter.)

Peter - Where are the exhibits? I'm not familiar with them.