My God,
it's full of stars!
Supernova bubble clocked at 19,000,000 km/h
Astronomers have produced a fetching animation of the inexorable outwards expansion of the remains of the Tycho Type Ia supernova - a white dwarf in a binary star system which went bang in spectacular fashion back in 1572. The explosion was so bright it was visible from Earth during the day, even at a distance of some 10,000 …
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Saturday 14th May 2016 19:47 GMT Anonymous Coward
Re: 19,000,000 km/h ?
""Yes, but how fast was Han Solo when he made the Kessel Run in 12 parsecs?""
Though I know this was a straight up scientific error in the film, it could actually be possible as an explanation. Suppose in a world of hyperluminal travel there is a star between you and the destination, which is 11 parsecs away. Your path of least action is also the longest path. The more energy you have available the closer you can pass to the star, and the shorter your path will be. Since you're moving in 4-dimensional spacetime, you can express the path equally in terms of time and distance since the one will determine the other. Since time is relative to the observer Han Solo would state the distance in parsecs, because his perceived time for the trip would be different from that of an observer, whereas once parked on the destination both he and the observer would agree fairly closely on the path length.
I think there is something similar with sailing ships. The closer a ship can sail to the wind, the shorter the path it can take, say, across the Atlantic. A tea clipper would not only be faster than HMS Victory on that route, it would potentially need a shorter distance because it could sail more northerly.
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Monday 16th May 2016 11:26 GMT cray74
Re: 19,000,000 km/h ?
AFAIK a parsec is a measure of distance !
Correct, and Han Solo made the run in a record short distance: 12 parsecs. Other pilots took longer routes to complete the Kessel Run.
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Friday 13th May 2016 16:06 GMT Pirate Dave
Has it been expanding at that rate the entire 444 years? If so, my sloppy calculations say it should be around 1,086,379,368,040,875.4 brontosauri across. That'd be over 93 trillion miles here in 'Murca, and just under 16 light-years (although that seems wrong but, eh, I did say it's "sloppy")
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Friday 13th May 2016 18:07 GMT adnim
Why indeed the observable Universe may not be spherical...
"Although the remnant is approximately circular, there are clear differences in the speed of the blast wave in different regions. The speed in the right and lower right directions is about twice as large as that in the left and the upper left directions."
I think the Universe is cat shaped
Biting the hand that feeds IT
