5 ms·
Yeah, it is and the math get's really counterintuitive to grasp since humans (at least me) have trouble thinking in exponential terms. If you accelerate at 1g
by marcyb5st 21d ago
Yeah, it is and the math get's really counterintuitive to grasp since humans (at least me) have trouble thinking in exponential terms.
If you accelerate at 1g constantly for 1y you travel 0.5 light years. You do that for 10.5 years and you reach the center of the milky way. You do that for another 4 (~14 total) years and you are in the Andromeda galaxy, and you do that for another 10 years (~24 years total) and you reach what today is considered the edge of the observable universe.
By the time you get there you are basically traveling at a rounding error from C.
- rrr_oh_man 21d ago> math get's really counterintuitive to grasp People always say that about speed of light stuff, but I don’t get it. Do you have any more examples of counterintuitive math? Because what you’re describing is basically the equivalent to compound interest in finance. (e.g. investing $100 at 10% interest over 10 years results in $260)
- jeanlucas 21d agoOne million seconds is 11 days, a billion seconds is 31 years.
- rrr_oh_man 21d agoThanks! But same here imho: 1,000 seconds = ~0.01 days (~17 min) 1,000,000 seconds = ~11.57 days (~12 days) 1,000,000,000 seconds = ~11,574.07 days (~32 years) 1,000,000,000,000 seconds = ~11,574,074.07 days (~32k years) It all seems quite logical once you put everything into the same unit, I think. Maybe it's just our human calendar/time unit rollercoaster (60*60*24*30*12) that's playing tricks on us here.
- jeanlucas 21d agoOf course it is logical, we are not discussing the math. But it isn't intuitive, you're not used to numbers that big or that grow that fast. Few things go from a million to a billion, especially when related to time.
- mathgeek 21d agoIt’s the units that make it seem unintuitive. 12 days is roughly 0.032 years, and 17 minutes is likewise 0.000032 years. It’s relative to how we were taught to view smaller lengths of time. Of course you could argue measuring time by the rotation of heavenly bodies is more intuitive than counting on your fingers for the hours in a day and days in a lunar cycle.
- saberience 21d agoGoing from a million to a billion isn't some special relationship. It's just * 1000. It's the same as going 11000 or 101000. I find it frustrating that people seem to think that someone going from 1M to 1B is somehow different to other numerical operations. It's not. It's 1000 times bigger, it's not a huge deal.
- jeanlucas 21d agoAnd any exponential growth is also a multiplication, it's not a big deal, just giving example on what they asked before. Somehow people are interpreting this as some kind of math trick. It's not a trick, our brains are not wire to deal with numbers growing quickly, but we do understand the math.
- RHSman2 21d agoOnly abstractly. If you are living in the process, it is hard and very few people live that.
- lightedman 21d agoWhich process, though? Every human alive easily went from millions of cells to billions of cells to trillions of cells.
- MathMonkeyMan 21d agoThe proper time (that is, the time the traveler measures on a clock) goes to zero very quickly towards the end. Even with both axes plotted logarithmically, it's just a sudden drop at the end towards light speed. - [pic](https://home.davidgoffredo.com/hackernews/proper-time-one-light-year.png https://home.davidgoffredo.com/hackernews/proper-time-one-li...) - [plot](https://home.davidgoffredo.com/hackernews/proper-time-one-light-year.plt https://home.davidgoffredo.com/hackernews/proper-time-one-li...)
- rrr_oh_man 21d agoLinks seem to be broken?
- MathMonkeyMan 21d agoNo, but IPv6 only these days. I never set up dynamic DNS.
- rrr_oh_man 21d agoCan you explain for dummies how... a normal person with a normal web browser should access this?
- tcfhgj 21d agoEnable ipv6
- Sohcahtoa82 21d agoNot an option for me. I have a residential ISP that gives me symmetrical gigabit fiber, but has no support for IPv6.
- chungy 21d agoHave an IPv6 connection.
- marcyb5st 21d ago[dead]
- ExoticPearTree 21d ago> If you accelerate at 1g constantly for 1y you travel 0.5 light years Can't we accelerate past 1G constantly? Or do we expend so much energy doing it that we can't realistically do it with today's technology?
- mjmas 21d agoWe can't necessarily survive that well when under acceleration greater than 9.81 metres per second per second for extended periods of time.
- lostlogin 21d agoGravity on Earth varies about .7%. Increasing the acceleration a little bit more than that (eg to 1%) would make a difference. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gravity_of_Earth https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gravity_of_Earth
- rrr_oh_man 21d ago> "Increasing the acceleration a little bit more than that (eg to 1%) would make a difference." Wouldn't that be only a few months on a decades-long journey at 1.01G vs 1G??
- lostlogin 21d agoI was thinking of journeys that are hundreds or thousands of years. If the acceleration was too great but survivable, what happens? I can’t imagine my back, knees or ankles would like it.
- wallst07 21d agoWe can easily accelerate past 1g... 1g is just chosen for human comfort, but running any rocket engine continuously for a year requires an impossible amount of fuel.
- jdjfbfbdbfnf 21d ago
- librasteve 21d agooh, so that’s where all the aliens are … up and cruising around at .99g
- devld 21d ago> You do that for 10.5 years and you reach the center of the milky way But that would be pretty pointless without taking the time to decelerate :)