4 ms·

It's exactly what you would want to do if you didn't want someone who found it to be able to tell where it came from

jerf 8y ago
For that, you just need the velocity vector not to be in the very narrow class of vectors that point back at you. There's no need to put it in "galactic neutral", especially given that, as I said, that's literally the worst possible speed to get anywhere. That's just one possible choice from the almost-every-possible-vector selection set that will work to disguise your origin. Of course, we also have the question of why you would care to disguise your origin for a "space probe" traveling at such a slow speed. (Pretty much every conceivable mechanism that could have something traveling at any appreciable speed and that slowed it down anytime in the recent past would be very easily detectable. Of course you can invoke inconceivable mechanisms, but as I often say, you have to understand you have left rationality and logic behind when you do that; if we're going to say this object has a magic drive that decelerates without any detectable emissions, we might as well ask why it's not just using an FTL drive, or why any alien civilization is bothering to "probe" us when they've long since landed at Area 51 and have long since been running our civilization anyhow as our secret leaders.)
- ncmncm 8y ago
  Whipping it around a nearby unoccupied star would be an easy way to obscure its origins. Just their bad luck that Sol turned out to be occupied, by a primitive civilization that might be able to act on knowledge of its origin vector in a few centuries or millennia. It looks slow to us, but it might be that whatever method it uses to skip big distances doesn't steer, so the only way to get pointed somewhere else is a close approach. And, of course, the method doesn't work in a gravity well, so it has to coast until it's a few hundred AU out. Will enough records be preserved through the coming dark ages (after the ecosystem collapses) for the raccoons or macaques or whatever inherits the earth to act on them?
  - newsbinator 8y ago
    The raccoons and macaques will likely have their own close approaches to observe and trace back.

jerf 8y ago

For that, you just need the velocity vector not to be in the very narrow class of vectors that point back at you. There's no need to put it in "galactic neutral", especially given that, as I said, that's literally the worst possible speed to get anywhere. That's just one possible choice from the almost-every-possible-vector selection set that will work to disguise your origin. Of course, we also have the question of why you would care to disguise your origin for a "space probe" traveling at such a slow speed. (Pretty much every conceivable mechanism that could have something traveling at any appreciable speed and that slowed it down anytime in the recent past would be very easily detectable. Of course you can invoke inconceivable mechanisms, but as I often say, you have to understand you have left rationality and logic behind when you do that; if we're going to say this object has a magic drive that decelerates without any detectable emissions, we might as well ask why it's not just using an FTL drive, or why any alien civilization is bothering to "probe" us when they've long since landed at Area 51 and have long since been running our civilization anyhow as our secret leaders.)

ncmncm 8y ago
Whipping it around a nearby unoccupied star would be an easy way to obscure its origins. Just their bad luck that Sol turned out to be occupied, by a primitive civilization that might be able to act on knowledge of its origin vector in a few centuries or millennia. It looks slow to us, but it might be that whatever method it uses to skip big distances doesn't steer, so the only way to get pointed somewhere else is a close approach. And, of course, the method doesn't work in a gravity well, so it has to coast until it's a few hundred AU out. Will enough records be preserved through the coming dark ages (after the ecosystem collapses) for the raccoons or macaques or whatever inherits the earth to act on them?
- newsbinator 8y ago
  The raccoons and macaques will likely have their own close approaches to observe and trace back.