Celestia Forums

I'd like to share two chapters that I wrote four years ago for the book that ended up as Appendixes. They explain how a speck of dust can, over time, accumulate mass from its gravity--growing into a star, growing til it goes supernova, grows as a neutron star, grows into a quark star, then supernova...

I'm going to have to change the title of my book from "The Scientifically Plausible Spaceship Adventure Story" to something else now, or seriously gut the thing so the farthest the characters get to is the Oort cloud. Depressing.

Disregard what I said about sub-periodic table fungus. I'm now trying to figure out the scientifically plausible way to send a robot from just one star to the next. I did some research on comets and it turns out that the Ikeya-Zhang comet has an orbital period of 366.57 years to go 101.9 AU (15,244,...

I am going to have to choose between going in the direction of Cygnus X, The Perseus Transit, or toward Turner 5/Vela Molecular Ridge Clouds. I found out that Turner 5 and the Vela Molecular Ridge Clouds are found in the night sky in the constellation of the southern sails. Questions: 1.The Perseus ...

Okay, so to be clear... 1 parsec = 3.26 light-years. The Oort cloud is estimated to have a diameter of 0.6 of a parsec, which is 1.96 light years.) Stars that are "measured" to be at 50 parsecs (a.k.a. 163 light-years) have a 2% distance accuracy. Which is the best we can get by using the ...

Ah, I'm getting a clearer picture now. I will have to narrow my search for G2V stars to just the Orion Spur then... possibly even within the vicinity/range of the Gould Belt. Okay, so instead now I need to know how far the Sun is to the closest (and also to the furthest) edge of the Orion Spur we ar...

I'm writing a scientifically plausible sci-fi story and need to know how to map a route of G2V stars (what I accept to be earth-bearing solar systems) from our sun to the side edge of our Galactic outer spiral arm (not the end of our spiral arm... just to the inside or outside side edge, equidistant...