My friend Arie is a deep-space photographer. Here’s his recent shot of the North America Nebula, so named for obvious reasons. It’s 2590 light years away – meaning that traveling at the speed of light it would take 2590 years to get there. The speed of light is 186,000 miles per second. Right now the fastest our rockets go is about 25,000 miles per hour (unless they’re being pulled by a big gravitational force, as when falling into the sun). So you see the problem! And it’s worse than that because as an object approaches the speed of light its mass increases (to infinity at the speed of light) which slows it back down. I assume this is why photons have no mass.
Far, Far Away
6 Comments on “Far, Far Away”
Interesting.
Good day to all.
Greetings!
Very interesting indeed. Great photo!
It is a very summery day in this neck of the woods today. Temps in the high 70’s with lots of sunshine.
Good afternoon to all!
You are warmer than me. It’s 73 and that was the high today. Tomorrow the high will be 71 and the nightly low tonight will be 48. Farmer Sam at City Farmer’s Nursery did say we are in a La Niña and it will be a colder, dryer winter than normal. Although we do have a 55% chance of rain on Saturday. It would be the first rain of the season and way early.
Interesting about the mass and speed thing. Arie sounds like an interesting guy.
It is National Checklist day and Haunted Refrigerator night. Time to do some fall cleaning. The dogs might find some extra goodies in their dinner tonight.
It is National Candycorn day. A day designed to cause strife. I never loved it and stopped liking it before I was ten.
But today is a day we can all get behind. It is National Treat Your Pet day. (see cleaning out the refrigerator above. They’ll never know it’s not an intentional treat.)
I wonder what Chet would think about that scene. He’d be the first to admit (and I’m right behind him in line) that he can’t grasp the concepts. 🤔
I think he’d say “What’s North America?” And that it looks more like the ghost of a sleeping cat.