Space Travel...

[giovannimusica]

If you got the chance to fly to our nearest star *Alpha Centauri* +/- 4.5 lightyears distant would you do it? I would. Of course, a round trip would take 9 years IF you had a spacecraft capable of traveling at the speed of light(300,000 kilometers per second). Now, each lightyear is 9,500,000,000,000 kilometers and if you had a spacecraft traveling at 50,000 kilometers per hour you could expect to be away a very long time from earth(21675.115 years for those who are mathematically challenged). Hypothetically, it means that if you leave earth when you're 10 years old, all your friends that you new then would have perished as would you. If, however you could travel at the speed of light you would only have aged 9 years but your friends, had they lived, would be 21675.115 years old. So, yes I would take that trip provided it was at lightspeed.

Now, the follow-on question? What would you do to keep yourself busy during those nine years at lightspeed? You wouldn't be able to see anything with your naked eye. I would compose much music for organ, choir and symphonic brass ensemble - explore all major/minor keys for the aforementioned groups.

Regards!

Giovanni

[rojo]

Hiya gio

Hmm. I think I have enough trouble with living on this planet.

I`m not really the adventurous type, I guess. But I fully support those who would wish to go. Send back photos, ok gio?

Space exploration is indeed a fascinating topic.

[Krummhorn]

I'm in ... like you said, a wonderful opportunity for composing.

Hopefully we have an organ installed on this ship - we want to be able to play our compositions ... but if the organ needs to be serviced, we're kinda sol

It would be interesting returning to our globe after 21,000 years had passed - might not be much of it left the way things are going, so we might be relegated to living out the rest of our lives in space.

[giovannimusica]

Aloha Br. Lars,

Great that you're game enough to be in on such a journey. Methinks we would have to stick to a Custom Built Walker Electronic for the journey. My girlfriend is crazy about the idea so that means you need to have a pow-wow with yours, eh?




Aloha RoJo,

Sorry that you couldn't come along - it'd been great fun - you're such a gracious soul on MIMF. Well, traveling at the speed of light would preclude any photo ops I'm sorry to say. We don't get alot of information by just studying photos of a star or galaxy. We get lots of information by studying spectra of stars. Also, we use radio astronomy and other techniques to get a better grip on whats out there. Here's a link which should give you an easily grasped overview:

http://images.google.com/imgres?imgu...%3Den%26sa%3DN

Regards!

Giovanni

[Simon Jansfort]

Giovanni, what makes you say that the friends of the traveller woul dhave ages 21000 something years ? If you travel at the speed of light it would only take you 9 years to get there, hence your friends would also only have ages 9 years!

Simon

[giovannimusica]

Hi Simon Jansfort,

Here's something for you to sink your teeth into in regards to relativistic travel:

http://musr.physics.ubc.ca/~jess/p200/str/str13.html

Regards!

Giovanni