Posted on 02/23/2018 9:21:36 PM PST by MtnClimber
Despite being only 4.3 light-years away from Earth, the trio of stars comprising Alpha Centauri still holds a lot of mysteries. It being the closest star system to us, you'd think we'd have teased out most of its secrets by now, but in fact we're still learning basic stuff about it.
We know some of the basics, of course. The system has two stars that orbit each other in a binary, one of which (called Alpha Centauri A) is much like the Sun and the other (Alpha Cen B) is a tad smaller and cooler. Nearby is a third star, Proxima Centauri, a low-mass and cool red dwarf, that by happenstance is somewhat closer to us, on the near side of the system.......
In that same year, though, astronomers announced a planet detected orbiting Proxima, and that one has stood the test of time. Proxima Centauri b, or just Proxima b for short, is a planet with at least 1.3 times as much mass as Earth, and orbits Proxima once every 11.2 days. That means it's very close to the star, about 7 million kilometers out, but Proxima is such a dim bulb that the planet gets about the same amount of heat we do from the Sun. We don't know much else about it, but just knowing it exists is a big deal.
(Excerpt) Read more at syfy.com ...
Interesting find at our nearest neighbor star group.
I did calcs on distances awhile ago, real roughly somewhere a little more than 24 trillion miles away.
It would take a long time to get there, even in a speeding Tesla.
Heck, our deficit is almost that large a number.
I think world derivatives are larger than that.
derivatives and unfunded mandates are more than the total amount of money in existence.
I am more interested in A Centauri findings, lol
You could hitch a ride in the back
Of one of the communist Chinese womens lexiii in the Costco parking lot. Shed get you to proxima in no time! Youd just have to keep her thinking she was still
At Costco and that the one empty parking space was always just ahead
*ping*
Not at warp speed.
Actually, how little time it could take is quite surprising - as I was thinking AND READING about this recently.
If you were in a rocket engine that produced a *sustained* thrust of 1g - that is, a continuous acceleration of 32 ft/sec/sec, you could travel from one end of the galaxy to the other *AND BACK* in your lifetime. That would be traversing not only Alpha centauri, but the other 200 billion stars, AND RETURN past them on the way back. You (with emphasis on 'you') could do this in 24 years of *your* life. This works by maintaining that small but steady acceleration for about 1 year, a which time you'd be traveling just under the speed of light. You'd need to re-light the engine such that you slow down at the other side of the galaxy in order to turn around, and then build up speed again, for the return trip. If you merely wanted to visit alpha centauri, and not the edge of the milky way, you could do this in, i forget the exact calculated amount, but its about 4 years.
The key to all of the above, of course, is that folks on earth would be long dead, as the *elapsed time* for them would be - again, forget the exact amount - very large - like 100,000 years.
This is NOT sci-fi (other than the engine creation), nor is it warp drive. The point being, for the traveler, clocks are different. And, all this is done with a "relatively" small engine producing a mere 1g of thrust.
Oh, and the bonus too of the above is that 1g, would produce earth-like comfort with more natural gravity aboard the spacecraft you are in. No need to spin it like in Kubrick's 2001.
Instead of starting the engine to slow down at the edge of the galaxy and then build speed back up, why not do a loop around a star system to maintain your current velocity so as to be more fuel efficient not to mention saving time on the return trip.
100,000 years might be enough time for the apes to build a civilization so you can return and do your best Charlton Heston impression upon seeing the Statue of Liberty.
I went back to a thread that does the math, and a slight correction (hey, I read this awhile ago). 20 years to get to the center of the galaxy, and 20 years to get back - 40 years, doable in one lifetime. For Alpha Centauri, it is 7 years to go and return.
The numbers to the center of the galaxy:
Ship time: 19.8 years
Earth time: 27,002 years
Peak velocity about 77 cm/sec less than c.
To Alpha centauri:
Ship time: 3.6 years
Earth time: 5.9 years
Peak velocity: 95% c
I was rhinking about the path you mentioned originally.
But now that you posted this math;
To Alpha centauri:
Ship time: 3.6 years
Earth time: 5.9 years
Peak velocity: 95% c
I would more likely be willing to take a trip to Alpha Centauri and back.
Funny coming from SyFY wire who had a miniseries called ascension that was supposed to be a pilot about a expedition to proxima centari but they never made a series...
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