thinkin of Picard
Dancing on the Galactic Plane
By Nicholas Enders
In every science fiction television show and movie, comic book and concept art, when two ships approach they are centered along the same artificial horizon. For a long time this bothered me greatly. Why should this be? Why should all space flight be on the same thin band of interstellar space? A logical answer came to me when I was thinking about the implications of, strangely enough, the plank scale. Earth is finally in a position to let go of her children and let them fall away from the nest in attempts to fly, in attempts for freedom.
The Milky Way has poles the same way that our Earth does. The “north” pole may be described as the pole that when viewed from above rotates counterclockwise, or it may be the South Pole realistically space faring civilizations would be traveling on a relatively narrow band of space when crossing the galaxy. I still don’t put much faith in universal translators though.
Humanity is quickly coming around to a common language, American English. We are no longer bound by the constraints of communication that had up till this point only been breached by mathamations. Connected in such a way as to bring individual understanding to any point on the globe has staggering ramifications, but if we are to attempt to conquer the stars we have to find terms for time and space that is not exclusive to one small planet.
What is a year? The time it takes a planet to make one revolution around its sun, more importantly, how long it takes EARTH to revolve around SOL. What is a day but the time it takes for EARTH to make one rotation? Hours, minutes, seconds and further divinations are all based off of one small planet's perspective of time. A mile is again an esoteric divination of space according to the very specific size of out planet. Though both miles and hours have formulae that can be used to determine similarly exclusive terms on other planets, why not just stick with one standard truly universal system. Once we begin establishing outposts on other planets this will suddenly become important business. And if in the chance that we encounter intelligent life in the galaxy I fear that we are going to have a hard time effectively bemoaning the distances we have traveled or the time we have endured though to meet them. We may not even be able to explain where we are from. What would a light-year mean to a civilization whose native planet took twenty of Earth’s years to make one rotation?
So, how does one establish a universal standard of measurements? Looking back at history it would seem logical to find the largest thing we have in common and start from there. Well the largest thing out there is the universe. Dividing up the universe, an expanding theoretical contraption impossible to measure, would be difficult. So let’s start slightly smaller with out own galaxy. Take the Milky Way galaxy and divide the diameter into equal parts suitably small enough to deal with on both a macro and micro scale. That would cover the spatial aspect. Now working with the same formula for time, take the time it takes for the galaxy to make one rotation and divide that into equal units. Just as Earth is not a perfect sphere, the galaxy is not a perfectly disc. Along what axis would the diameter lie? Are all the outer stars in the galaxy traveling at the same speed? Which start do we align out standard with? Neither measurement for distance nor time would be suitable from a galactic division.
All standards are based off of one thing, a constant baseline. Up until very recently there have only few constants known to humanity. The sp eed of light and absolute zero are two indisputable constants. It is impossible for information to travel faster than the speed of light, and absolute zero, the coldest possible temperature, where all molecular motion ceases. The speed of light is vastly important when dealing with distances on an astrological scale, but is only functional when dealing with a standard unit of time. Scientists have discovered that out universe is not a continuous flow of infinitely divisible energy but made up of discreet units of space, energy, and time that exists on the smallest possible divisible scale, the Plank scale. At the Plank scale the universe stops being a swirling mass of chaos and more closely resembles a clockwork machination with Swiss precision.
Working from a smallest possible baseline would create universally identifiable units. These units would not replace earth’s twenty four-hour day or meter, but act as a scientific language for travelers and information relays. New terms that may describe a space as being defined as, oh say, the space of one Plank unit times time to the sixty-fourth power may replace the centimeter, and so on for the second and the calorie, and whatnot. Finding a standard unit may not be the key to unlocking the stars, but it may unify them.
By Nicholas Enders
In every science fiction television show and movie, comic book and concept art, when two ships approach they are centered along the same artificial horizon. For a long time this bothered me greatly. Why should this be? Why should all space flight be on the same thin band of interstellar space? A logical answer came to me when I was thinking about the implications of, strangely enough, the plank scale. Earth is finally in a position to let go of her children and let them fall away from the nest in attempts to fly, in attempts for freedom.
The Milky Way has poles the same way that our Earth does. The “north” pole may be described as the pole that when viewed from above rotates counterclockwise, or it may be the South Pole realistically space faring civilizations would be traveling on a relatively narrow band of space when crossing the galaxy. I still don’t put much faith in universal translators though.
Humanity is quickly coming around to a common language, American English. We are no longer bound by the constraints of communication that had up till this point only been breached by mathamations. Connected in such a way as to bring individual understanding to any point on the globe has staggering ramifications, but if we are to attempt to conquer the stars we have to find terms for time and space that is not exclusive to one small planet.
What is a year? The time it takes a planet to make one revolution around its sun, more importantly, how long it takes EARTH to revolve around SOL. What is a day but the time it takes for EARTH to make one rotation? Hours, minutes, seconds and further divinations are all based off of one small planet's perspective of time. A mile is again an esoteric divination of space according to the very specific size of out planet. Though both miles and hours have formulae that can be used to determine similarly exclusive terms on other planets, why not just stick with one standard truly universal system. Once we begin establishing outposts on other planets this will suddenly become important business. And if in the chance that we encounter intelligent life in the galaxy I fear that we are going to have a hard time effectively bemoaning the distances we have traveled or the time we have endured though to meet them. We may not even be able to explain where we are from. What would a light-year mean to a civilization whose native planet took twenty of Earth’s years to make one rotation?
So, how does one establish a universal standard of measurements? Looking back at history it would seem logical to find the largest thing we have in common and start from there. Well the largest thing out there is the universe. Dividing up the universe, an expanding theoretical contraption impossible to measure, would be difficult. So let’s start slightly smaller with out own galaxy. Take the Milky Way galaxy and divide the diameter into equal parts suitably small enough to deal with on both a macro and micro scale. That would cover the spatial aspect. Now working with the same formula for time, take the time it takes for the galaxy to make one rotation and divide that into equal units. Just as Earth is not a perfect sphere, the galaxy is not a perfectly disc. Along what axis would the diameter lie? Are all the outer stars in the galaxy traveling at the same speed? Which start do we align out standard with? Neither measurement for distance nor time would be suitable from a galactic division.
All standards are based off of one thing, a constant baseline. Up until very recently there have only few constants known to humanity. The sp eed of light and absolute zero are two indisputable constants. It is impossible for information to travel faster than the speed of light, and absolute zero, the coldest possible temperature, where all molecular motion ceases. The speed of light is vastly important when dealing with distances on an astrological scale, but is only functional when dealing with a standard unit of time. Scientists have discovered that out universe is not a continuous flow of infinitely divisible energy but made up of discreet units of space, energy, and time that exists on the smallest possible divisible scale, the Plank scale. At the Plank scale the universe stops being a swirling mass of chaos and more closely resembles a clockwork machination with Swiss precision.
Working from a smallest possible baseline would create universally identifiable units. These units would not replace earth’s twenty four-hour day or meter, but act as a scientific language for travelers and information relays. New terms that may describe a space as being defined as, oh say, the space of one Plank unit times time to the sixty-fourth power may replace the centimeter, and so on for the second and the calorie, and whatnot. Finding a standard unit may not be the key to unlocking the stars, but it may unify them.