Starship Asterisk*

apodman wrote:Obviously we should tune in to a signal from a probe that someone else launched long ago.

apodman wrote:One observer's snapshot is another's time-distributed view.

NoelC wrote:Seems to me looking at a galaxy off in the distance face-on is pretty different from looking at one from the inside, from off to the side.

How far does galactic material rotate in 100,000 years?

What we can see from here, now, of the other side of our galaxy is many millenia out of date, while the stuff we can see locally is nearly current.

What an observer well above a galaxy would be more or less a "snapshot" of the galactic material all at the same time.

-Noel

dfranco wrote:The picture showing the possible z-axis view of the Milky Way has the text that says something to the effect "Astronmers believe that Sol is about a third away from the edge of the galaxy on the Orion Spur. However, if one mouse overs the image, it appears that Sol is about a third away from the centre of the galaxy. Which is it?

Also, according to http://viewzone.com/milkyway.html solar system appears closer to the edge of the galaxy and the solar system is not from the Milky Way!

NoelC wrote:While many galaxies exhibit perturbation, presumably because of gravitational interaction with others, it's not impossible to imagine that our galaxy could be quite symmetrical, especially given that we have actual images of galaxies like these...

The symmetry is too perfect for nature .. nature is always slightly 'flawed'

iamlucky13 wrote:It's too clean!

Of course, until someone actually heads north about 100,000 light years and takes a picture, we won't really be able to say exactly what it looks like, but none of the other galaxies are ever this clean looking.

Any volunteers? I'll let you borrow my camera, but you'll have to pay for gas on your own.

• Science Fiction Theatre
  Episode 1-36 Are We Invaded? 31 December 1955
  Pat O'Brien, Anthony Eustrel, Leslie Gaye
  
  <<"That which we do not understand sometimes causes apprehension." A reporter and the daughter of a respected astronomer, watching the stars one evening from their parked car, see what they consider a flying saucer. A stranger appears at the door of the car saying he too saw the light in the sky, and asks if he can be given a lift down the hill into town. Later, the astronomer refuses to believe the couple saw anything more than an optical illusion. To prove the existence of UFOs, the reporter films a documentary of witnesses, while the astronomer promptly demonstrates scientific explanations for each wittnesse's sightings. But the mysterious stranger has dropped off a photograph at the astronomer's lab- a photograph of our solar system taken from deep space. The stranger has disappeared, but left a forwarding address:
  Alpha Centauri, 4.5 light years from Earth.>>
  ---------------------------------------
  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Science_Fiction_Theatre
  <<Science Fiction Theatre is a syndicated science fiction anthology series. It was produced in the United States by Ivan Tors and Maurice Ziv. Hosted by Truman Bradley, a 1940s film actor and former war correspondent, each episode introduced stories which had an extrapolated scientific, or pseudo-scientific emphasis based on actual scientific data available in the 1950s. The program concentrated on such concepts as space flight, robots, telepathy, flying saucers, time travel, and the intervention of extraterrestrials in human affairs.
  
  It ran from 1955 to 1957, with a total of 78 half hour episodes. It was also known as Beyond The Limits in second run syndication during the 1960s and alternatively as Science Fiction Theater.
  
  Science Fiction Theatre was a forerunner of similar shows, such as The Twilight Zone and The Outer Limits. Science Fiction Theatre was mentioned in the 1985 film Back to the Future starring Michael J. Fox (not to be confused with Michael Fox, a frequent actor in Science Fiction Theatre episodes) and Christopher Lloyd.
  
  Each episode was introduced by a stirring brass, string, and woodwind fanfare while the camera panned over a science laboratory.
  
  Host: How do you do, ladies and gentlemen? I'm your host, Truman Bradley.
  Let me show you something interesting
  
  Then Truman Bradley showed a simple scientific experiment which was usually related to the topic of that week's show. Mr. Bradley's demonstrations were often staged, but yielded results consistent with the outcome of true experiments. Due to the limited budgets and intense production scheduals of ZIV episodic television shows, most of the scientific, and not so scientific apparatus appears again and again as props with many different functions.>>