Gravity is not faster than light, it is a field - you only experience the information that it conveys when you enter that field.
Great discussion btw
Perhaps a very stupid question!
- Thread starter 777Driver
- Start date
Gravity is not faster than light, it is a field - you only experience the information that it conveys when you enter that field.
Great discussion btw
This may not be a direct answer to the original question, but it is linked.
I presumed that one reason why gathering any kind of cartographic data in the game payed out credits - even when someone else has already scanned the system - was because you're providing data on the positioning and state of stellar bodies at the moment you were there. I would guess any information of that type would be useful for ongoing navigation in a galaxy where relative observation of your destination would likely to be at least a couple of years out of date from your point of view. It provided a nice little justification in my head at least.
Of course, this still doesn't answer anything about knowing the position of stars in the galactic centre or in one of the distant spiral arms that we haven't been to yet...
I presumed that one reason why gathering any kind of cartographic data in the game payed out credits - even when someone else has already scanned the system - was because you're providing data on the positioning and state of stellar bodies at the moment you were there. I would guess any information of that type would be useful for ongoing navigation in a galaxy where relative observation of your destination would likely to be at least a couple of years out of date from your point of view. It provided a nice little justification in my head at least.
Of course, this still doesn't answer anything about knowing the position of stars in the galactic centre or in one of the distant spiral arms that we haven't been to yet...
This DOES mean though that virtual reality becomes waaay cheaper, since it now effectively means all of existence.
We can right now, using today's technology build up a model predicting how distant stars and celestial objects will change their position over time.
By measuring things like distance from earth, angular diameter and velocity of the object and comparing those measurements to historical observations we can predict how the object will behave over time.
The reality could be different but the models can give us a pretty good idea of how the galaxy and the position of stars will change over a period of time. As the game is set over 1000 years from now, there would presumably me much more accurate models available which could accurately plot the position of the distant stars.
We can also predict how a star/solar system will evolve over time.. For example, current predictions suggest that Betelguese (Alpha Orionis), which is one of the stars in the Orion constellation, will go supernova within the next few hundred thousand years. We can predict this by observing how the star's mass, luminosity etc. is changing over time. However even if it did go nova there would still be something there, in the form of a neutron star remnant.
Love the thread by the way...
Last edited:
Tigga nailed it. The star you are near and the star you are looking at are expanding from the center of the universe at the same relative rate. If close, that velocity is almost equal. Think of two boats in the same tidal flow.