Unit Conversion

[buggs_moran]

Howdy folks,

Due to a recent post dealing with unit conversion I figured I'd post a link to the program I use on my computers (useful when you're not online). It's free and fast and as far as I can tell, contains no spyware. It contains an engineering reference dictionary as well as the converter.

http://www.engnetglobal.com/tips/toolsapp/default.aspx

[Spaceman Spiff]

Does it tell you the conversion rate of Tuesdays to market prices in Dollars or Euros so we'd know what to charge you for Windows CVS builds?*

Spiff.

* Sorry, couldn't resist!

[buggs_moran]

funny Europeans... That actually made me (L)augh (O)ut (L)oud, Thanks!

[buggs_moran]

I found a good website (no ads, no popups) with online conversion features today and figured I'd post it.

http://www.unitconversion.org/

And I figured I would also offer up this site with tons of engineering, science, and mathematical references. It is heavily geared to RF and Electrical Engineering, but has many, many other references. It is a bit cluttered, and has ads, but I think it is still worth the bookmark. I wish I had this reference in college, but the internet didn't have "sites" yet. Everything collected in one place was called a library.

[Captain Nephilim]

Thanks, Buggs. That will be handy.

Here's a quick and simple web-based calculator for converting light years to AUs, light seconds to miles, etc: http://www.easysurf.cc/cnver15.htm

And for extra geekiness, here's a calculator to convert warp speed (or warp factor) to multiples of c (the speed of light): http://home.att.net/~srschmitt/script_warpcalc.html

It's interesting: turns out that, according to my own guesstimation, the ships on Star Trek would have to be moving at something between 1 and 5 light years per second, in order for the stars to zoom by even at the slowest rate depicted on TV. But 1 light year per second (F7 key in Celestia for Windows) works out to something like Warp 9.99975. At a typical cruise velocity of Warp 5 or 6, the background stars would not move noticeably at all . . . and it would take the Enterprise days to get from Earth to Alpha Centauri.

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[buggs_moran]

Thanks, Buggs. That will be handy.

It's interesting: turns out that, according to my own guesstimation, the ships on Star Trek would have to be moving at something between 1 and 5 light years per second, in order for the stars to zoom by even at the slowest rate depicted on TV. But 1 light year per second (F7 key in Celestia for Windows) works out to something like Warp 9.99975. At a typical cruise velocity of Warp 5 or 6, the background stars would not move noticeably at all . . . and it would take the Enterprise days to get from Earth to Alpha Centauri.

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There are many, many, more stars in the same sphere as the 2.5 million brightest stars catalogued in the Tycho database, which is the best you can do for Celestia. However, you are correct in saying the stars zooming by between here and A-Cen would not be seen. As for it taking days, well, yeah, it took the crew days to pass between systems. They only got to places fast if they went to warp 9 if memory serves me...

[Captain Nephilim]

There are many, many, more stars in the same sphere as the 2.5 million brightest stars catalogued in the Tycho database, which is the best you can do for Celestia...

Oh yeah, I'm aware of that. But I don't have any reason to think that the Enterprise D (or Voyager, etc) was usually in an area of the galaxy that was far denser than our local neighborhood. Even in the volume of the galaxy relatively nearby Sol (lets say 1000 light years) there aren't enough stars to justify the number you see zooming by on Star Trek. And now that I think about it, I guess you're right about how long it took them to get around.

I think I read Michael Okuda (or Rick Sternbach or someone) saying that maybe the "stars" you see on the show during warp were actually interstellar dust and pebbles excited to glowing by the warp field.

Whatever.

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