It takes some imagination...

[Lost Leopard Spot]

Am sat sitting, waiting for a delayed flight. Just out of curiosity I've downloaded an app. It's a star map. And the first star I looked at is one called Menkar. Unobtrusive, star like. Apparently it lies 220 light years away...

And suddenly, just like that, I doubted the scientific background I've been brought up to believe.

The twinkle that tells me that star is there took two hundred and twenty years travelling at 186,000 miles a second. And I can see it. Which means tens, if not hundreds of photons are hitting my eye each moment.
But, if I move to the left by a couple of yards, I can still see it. How many fxcking photons must a star put out such that you can see it over a sphere that has a radius of two hundred and twenty light years and is still visible for every second on every single straight line of that radius... Surely that must be billions of billions of billions of billions of billions. Mind-numbing sums, that appear to me to be unrealistic. I need to think more about this. Good job my flight is delayed.

[Lost Leopard Spot]

Light travels at 299,792,458,000 mm per second.
Multiply that by 60 (mins), and that by 60 (hours), and that by 24 (days), and that by 365 (years), and that by 220 to give the radius, which is: my calculator gives up...

[Hoboh]

I'd guess the bar is shut or busy

[Lost Leopard Spot]

I'd guess the bar is shut or busy

Waiting for a plane.

The answer by the way is
3,103,200,000,000,000,000,000,000 square millimetres.
Which means that star was two hundred years ago producing at least, the very least, 3,103,200,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 photons every second.
It makes the amount of money the EU sucks into the atmosphere every year peanuts in comparison.

[Lost Leopard Spot]

Right. As somebody has just suggested to me, that's merely the number of atoms in ten buckets of air... Ok.

[Lost Leopard Spot]

Right. As somebody has just suggested to me, that's merely the number of atoms in ten buckets of air... Ok.

...which suggests that if you took ten buckets of air and slung them away at the speed of light, over two hundred years later at least a thousand atoms per square millimetres would be splashing over distant aliens... I need to reconfigure my brain... really.

[Enoch]

To paraphrase Mat, I say unto you, It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle, than for a leopard to get his neck round our insignificance in this universe.

Merry festering.

[TANGODANCER]

Another rather staggering fact I remembered whilst playing compasses to find which direction Jerusalem/Bethlehem lay from my location in Farnworth. I knew it was South East of my location, then a simple fact surfaced: If you stand in one spot and turn slowly round in a circle you can actually be facing any country in the world in the time it takes to turn around. I did a quick world tour in 30 seconds that cost me nothing.

p.s. A Bolton/Jerusalem line on the map is almost 45 degrees as the crow flies with Bethlehem a tad south of that.. Just thought I'd mention it..

jerusalem.png (37.95 KiB) Viewed 2092 times

[Enoch]

Is that on the Mercator projection where the UK looks about a fifth the size of Africa and Greenland is the biggest place on earth?

[TANGODANCER]

Is that on the Mercator projection where the UK looks about a fifth the size of Africa and Greenland is the biggest place on earth?

Quite possibly Enoch, but the direction's confirmed. Just follow the star.

[Enoch]

Is that on the Mercator projection where the UK looks about a fifth the size of Africa and Greenland is the biggest place on earth?

Quite possibly Enoch... . ... Just follow the star.

Would that make me a wise man?

[TANGODANCER]

Is that on the Mercator projection where the UK looks about a fifth the size of Africa and Greenland is the biggest place on earth?

Quite possibly Enoch... . ... Just follow the star.

Would that make me a wise man?

Well, if you're the Frankincense one you could finish up at the Unibol..

[Montreal Wanderer]

Another rather staggering fact I remembered whilst playing compasses to find which direction Jerusalem/Bethlehem lay from my location in Farnworth. I knew it was South East of my location, then a simple fact surfaced: If you stand in one spot and turn slowly round in a circle you can actually be facing any country in the world in the time it takes to turn around. I did a quick world tour in 30 seconds that cost me nothing.

p.s. A Bolton/Jerusalem line on the map is almost 45 degrees as the crow flies with Bethlehem a tad south of that.. Just thought I'd mention it..

I'm not sure I'd agree here. By turning around you are facing the horizon and beyond it to outerspace. Sight, like light, travels in a straight line and you would need special equipment to bend it. We live on a sphere. So, to face New Zealand, you would have to look straight down between your feet.

[TANGODANCER]

Another rather staggering fact I remembered whilst playing compasses to find which direction Jerusalem/Bethlehem lay from my location in Farnworth. I knew it was South East of my location, then a simple fact surfaced: If you stand in one spot and turn slowly round in a circle you can actually be facing any country in the world in the time it takes to turn around. I did a quick world tour in 30 seconds that cost me nothing.

p.s. A Bolton/Jerusalem line on the map is almost 45 degrees as the crow flies with Bethlehem a tad south of that.. Just thought I'd mention it..

I'm not sure I'd agree here. By turning around you are facing the horizon and beyond it to outerspace. Sight, like light, travels in a straight line and you would need special equipment to bend it. We live on a sphere. So, to face New Zealand, you would have to look straight down between your feet.

That could be open to argument Monty due to lattitude and longtitude and New Zealand having an official direction of N.N.E from UK. Everywhere has a direction. You can hit a golf ball upwards, but it still goes in a compass direction even so. Admitted, due to gravity, you can hit it downwards from a high place, but due to the same spherical shape of the earth and the curve it would need, it would still have to go in a direction from where you stand. What would be the point of direction finding and compasses otherwise?

[Prufrock]

Don't tell me you're a flat earther too, TD!!

I was tempted to reply in the same vein as Monty but I decided against the pedantry .

[Montreal Wanderer]

Another rather staggering fact I remembered whilst playing compasses to find which direction Jerusalem/Bethlehem lay from my location in Farnworth. I knew it was South East of my location, then a simple fact surfaced: If you stand in one spot and turn slowly round in a circle you can actually be facing any country in the world in the time it takes to turn around. I did a quick world tour in 30 seconds that cost me nothing.

p.s. A Bolton/Jerusalem line on the map is almost 45 degrees as the crow flies with Bethlehem a tad south of that.. Just thought I'd mention it..

I'm not sure I'd agree here. By turning around you are facing the horizon and beyond it to outerspace. Sight, like light, travels in a straight line and you would need special equipment to bend it. We live on a sphere. So, to face New Zealand, you would have to look straight down between your feet.

That could be open to argument Monty due to lattitude and longtitude and New Zealand having an official direction of N.N.E from UK. Everywhere has a direction. You can hit a golf ball upwards, but it still goes in a compass direction even so. Admitted, due to gravity, you can hit it downwards from a high place, but due to the same spherical shape of the earth and the curve it would need, it would still have to go in a direction from where you stand. What would be the point of direction finding and compasses otherwise?

Again I disagree. When I drive a golf ball it may go in one direction for 150 yards, then it either slices two fairways over or hooks into the out of bounds. Prufrock accusing me of pedantry - what is the world coming to.

[TANGODANCER]

"FORE!".