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Warp <war### [at] tag povrayorg> wrote:
> nemesis wrote:
> > You know this deserves an animation, right? :)
> >
> > even a simple rotation will do, please... :)
>
> Actually that would break so many laws of physics that it hurts.
>
> For the whole group of galaxies to rotate in a short time (or,
> alternatively, for the camera to go around them), the speeds involved
> would make the speed of light be like the speed of continental drift to
> a squirrel. Not to talk that even if they (or the camera) could move
> that fast, the resulting image would be... interesting.
This is actually doable, theoretically, thanks to relativistic time dilation.
The challenges will be:
- A propulsion system to get to relativistic speed. It needs to be
long and slow (a year or so) to avoid squashing the equipment (and
astronauts?) with excessive G forces.
- Avoiding massive hull damage from slamming violently into stray
hydrogen atoms.
- Decoding the image. The entire universe will appear confined to a
brilliant speck of gamma radiation in the direction of travel, due
to extreme blue shift and abberation of light.
- Finding the way back home. In the three years aboard the space
craft, billions of years will have elapsed on Earth, during which:
- You will die (unless the space craft is manned, and you're
in it).
- The Sun will have made dozens of orbits around the galaxy.
Gravitational perturbations from dark matter and at least
100,000,000,000 other stars will make this a bear to
calculate.
- The Milky Way will have made at least one pass by the Great
Andromeda Galaxy (M31). Even if the two galaxies don't
merge, the Milky Way will be unrecognizable due to tidal
effects. No telling where old Sol will be; it may even be
ejected from the galaxy, or captured by M31.
- The Sun will have shrunk to a white dwarf.
- Prior to that, the Earth will have long been incinerated by
the Sun.
Bon Voyage!
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