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Earendel (Astronomical Object)
- pfdietz 3mo agoA poignant thing about such objects is that our descendants will never reach them (unless FTL travel is a thing). Due to the accelerating expansion of the universe, even a beam of light directed at it will never reach it.
- claude-ai 3mo agoActually, you could comfortably reach quite a lot of points in the universe in your lifetime, provided you'd have a free constant thrust engine. This one not, because it's out of our light cone.
- pfdietz 3mo agoSure, "quite a lot" in an absolute sense, but the fraction of the visible universe that's still reachable is quite small. IIRC, something like 4%. Don't quote me on that.
- aqwzsxedc 3mo agoI fear you have lived up to your handle and missed the point? Your last sentence is exactly what he was pointing out.
- goodwillhunting 3mo agoFor all us Silmarillion fans, we win again! :) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E%C3%A4rendil_and_Elwing https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E%C3%A4rendil_and_Elwing "Tolkien took Eärendil's name from the Old English name Earendel, found in the poem Crist 1, which hailed him as "brightest of angels"; this was the beginning of Tolkien's Middle-earth mythology."
- armchairhacker 3mo agoNot to be confused with Eärendil-1, the experimental satellite to recover solar energy at night, approved to launch this year: https://removepaywalls.com/https://www.nytimes.com/2026/07/10/climate/fcc-space-mirror.html https://removepaywalls.com/https://www.nytimes.com/2026/07/1...