Slashdot Mirror
"Tube Map" Created For the Milky Way
astroengine writes "Assuming you had an interstellar spaceship, how would you navigate around the galaxy? For starters, you'd probably need a map. But there's billions of stars out there — how complex would that map need to be? Actually, Samuel Arbesman, a research fellow from Harvard, has come up with a fun solution. He created the 'Milky Way Transit Authority (MWTA),' a simple transit system in the style of the iconic London Underground 'Tube Map.' (Travel Tip: Don't spend too much time loitering around the station at Carina, there's some demolition work underway.)"
I just know that from Lave, you should try to get to Zaonce and Isinor to build up your credits...
I'll take 10 tickets, please. With FTL transit, grav-shielding and a couple of window seats. Thank you.
Mind the gap!
With PDF version! http://arbesman.net/milkyway/
Which ones are the Mass Relays?
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
First class gets extra inertial damping. It costs more but it's soooo worth it.
Please do not read this sig. Thank you.
My job is located at Galaxy Center. But I live at The Hamptons. The problem is, I have to take Brown line and yellow line to reach the center, It takes for ever and in some locations the AT&T signals are not that good and I cannot do anything with my iPad. Well that's life...
I like it, really, I do. But seriously. When measuring distance in light years, the shortest path will always between two points(1)
(1) not including areas of space/time warping and dilation
Life is not for the lazy.
. . . to the Magellanic Clouds?
Why the gray "Canis Major" box?
Don't forget your towel!
Where's Mornington Crescent?
Once I was a four stone apology. Now I am two separate gorillas.
Actually, the interstellar transport system is like a box of chocolates ... you never know where you're going to end up. It was prototyped from an airport luggage handling system - more specifically, Denver.
Nobody's ever complained. Then again, nobody's ever come back.
Ubuntu has a logo?
...we ended up on a fucking spur line. Why is it I always have to transfer every time I want to go somewhere cool!
Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
The butthurt is strong with this one.
Thinking Ubuntu is the most popular/important distribution is the bigger issue.
I'm starting to think GNU is the problem with "GNU/Linux" these days.
that intergallactic travel will be just as confusing as the real tube.
After logging in slashdot still does not take you back to the page you were on. It's been that way for 20 years.
However I wouln't use my PAYG Oyster card on that tube because the fares would be a little higher when I'd touch out...
How did Sol rate even a minor station. A crummy little G2 minor league star.
I suspect undue influence at the planning commission or city council for this station to even exist.
Earth really is "Far out in the uncharted backwaters of the unfashionable end of the Western Spiral arm of the Galaxy..."
This ain't rocket surgery.
I hear they'll be building a highway close by some time soon.
This will truly revolutionize the game of Mornington Crescent!
Sol is the sun's official name. "The sun" is colloquial. I suspect that when we have colonists on other planets, they will probably refer to their star as "The sun" in day-to-day conversation rather than talking about "Alpha Centairi B-shine today" in the weather.
Last I heard, "The Sun" and "The Moon" were in fact the official terms. Ironic that astronomers can be a tad geocentric like that.
"Sol" and sometimes "Luna" are just overwhelmingly popular sci-fi terms, but yes, probably would be the terms eventually adopted by colonists.
according to distrowatch, it is. Of course, I recognize that in many production environments, they are likely not reporting to distrowatch, and probably things like RHEL and SLES (and CentOS, Gentoo, etc) are fairly popular... but Ubuntu is definitely one of the most popular "normal person" Linux distro. If people have heard of Linux and only know what distribution, they seem to know Ubuntu. Not openSuSE or RedHat.
Mind the gap, please!... or be SUCKED INTO OUTER SPACE!
The Institute of Incomplete Research has determined that 9 of out 10
If we swerve wildly around those, we might get some sort of gravity-boost or something
Don't use stupid Intergalactic Public Mass-Transit, Instead they drive their Space SUVs and Space Hummers all over the place spreading Nebula Gasses all over the galaxy leading to Galactic Warming....
Tsukasa: All I really want, is to be left alone...
There is a tiny bit of truth to the map...but just a tiny bit.
If using a Bussard ramjet, it might be usefult to stay in the galactic arms where there would be more interstellar matter for your engine. If you take a shortcut across the arms, you may not encounter enough mass to accelerate to the velocity you want.
Of course, the difference between 0.99% of c and 0.999% of c may not matter that much considering your voyage will last longer than your galactic civilization.
In my experience more people have known Red Hat then Ubuntu. Although you are correct that distrowatch says there are more hits on Ubuntu then RH/Fedora
I'm starting to think GNU is the problem with "GNU/Linux" these days.
Mornington Crescent.
I win.
Think of a Martian looking at his "moons". You think he would call it The Moon 1 and The Moon 2? At least we gave them separate names.
Naturally any self respecting Martian would refer to them as Thuria and Cluros.
This is the first attempt at the Total Perspective Vortex! Now all they need is some fairy cake!
General Relativity: Space-time tells matter where to go; Matter tells space-time what shape to be.
stargate system is faster and non stop point to point.
Why? It finally proves the universe is flat.
You can't take the sky from me.
I don't see the systems for Terminus, Vulcan, or Hoth anywhere on the map!
Sure baby, I'll give you my phone number...in Hex
Look, the guy's at Harvard, so it's more likely that it's a play on the MBTA Subway Map than a London Tube Map.
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
Last I checked, neither our sun nor our moon have official names, but they are colloquially called The Sun and The Moon. However, given that there are an awfully large number of suns and moons, those seem to be silly names once you leave the earth. Sol and Luna seem the most logical to me.
Except I believe "sol" and "luna" simply mean "sun" and "moon", respectively - it's just they're not English words. So you're basically telling people to replace those "silly" English names with equivalently silly - and equally non-descriptive - non-English names.
#DeleteChrome
Please. No one needs tubes. All one needs is a little spice to fold space --and possibly some 'Juice of Saphoo' for the trip.
I've got your sig, right here.
What do you expect from a planet full of beings so low in self-esteem that they named their planet after dirt.
People may *have* known "Red Hat" in the past (I guess) because it seemed to be one of the only Linux companies ever in the news... I personally knew about Red Hat before I tried Mandrake and SuSE. But Ubuntu seems to be on the tip of everyone's tongue (if they even know what "Linux" is), now. And a lot of people mispronounce it, too. For some reason, they like spelling/pronouncing it Ubunto...
Presumably if we ever get around to colonizing different star systems, each star system will call that star in the middle of the system "the sun" instead of whatever astronomical name we give it now. I would find it retardedly annoying to constantly go "Man, Tau Ceti is sure bright today, better stay inside or else you'll get Tau Ceti-burn", and just use sun instead. Which leaves us with what the fuck do we call the Sun that the homeplanet orbits? So we take huge ass hint from science fiction and call it Sol.
Not really. Ganymede is a moon. When I refer to The Moon, I mean the one that goes round the planet I'm standing on.
Just like if I'm in London and I refer to "The Queen", I mean Lizzy the kraut and not Beatrix the cheesehead.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
Why is that stupid? It's pretty accurate.
Why? The Sun = the one we orbit. Suns/stars = all the other ones. Merely substituting "Sol" for "The Sun" adds nothing other than a veneer of intellectuality over a thick layer of pretentiousness.
I don't see what ambiguity this is trying to prevent. It's totally obvious from the context. Even a two year old gets this. He knows that when he says "daddy" it means a different person to when his friend says it.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
This map is not supposed to be posted on the internet. It is supposed to be taped to underside of bottom drawer of a filing cabinet in a disused toilet in the dark unlit basement without stairs guarded by a leopard in the municipal building in Alpha Centauri.
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
Last I heard, they needed to build a tunnel through here as well..
Omega Centauri isn't even in the Milky Way galaxy. It was thought to be a globular cluster but there's now evidence it is actually the core of a dwarf galaxy long ago stripped of it's outer stars.
These posts express my own personal views, not those of my employer
The non-descriptive ones have the advantage of being non-descriptive. We're talking about unambiguous ways of referring to the sun Earth orbits and Earth's moon. "The sun" and "the moon" can be applied to just about any planet and will refer to that planet's sun or moon. We could use "Earth's sun/moon" but that's unwieldy, which provides a disincentive to using it.
We could start capitalizing the words when they refer to the Earthen ones (I'd say "Terran" but that's just another silly foreign word) but then again - would anyone actually use them in that way? Well, anyone outside the German-speaking countries? (And on that note, this convention horribly fails in German where the terms are already capitalized.)
Remember, we're talking about globally unambiguous identifiers. "Sun" and "moon" do not fit, being descriptive terms.
USE HOT GRITS WITH STATUE OF NATALIE PORTMAN (NAKED AND PETRIFIED)
Where's the "You are Here" arrow? I 'm totally lost.
Adeptus
No trees were killed in the making of this post; however, many trillions of electrons were horribly inconvenienced.
The really interesting thing to me was how far away we can see stars in our galaxy. I'd always assumed that observable individual stars were relatively close while only uber-bright objects like galaxies and clusters were visible from further away.
I swear to God...I swear to God! That is NOT how you treat your human!
...isn't it going to be a *really* long walk between platforms at the interchange stations? Having a single station span the entire galactic centre doesn't really make any sense as it's generally too large to walk across (or so I've been told - I generally prefer to stay north of the galactic centre as it's much more civilised). Hopefully TfMW will install travelators at the stations to ease the morning commute.
Moderation Total: -1 Troll, +3 Goat
...and information had never heard of it.
---
Astronomy Feed @ Feed Distiller
Ubuntu has a logo?
Sure it has. There's even a "parody" of it.
Speaking of which, how do I get to Alpha Centauri? It is supposed to be in the spot nearest to Sol, but I can't understand where it is.
hemi
Have you seen how far I have to travel to get from here to Andromeda Customs? No fewer than four changes too. And it's a bloody long walk from one platform to the other at New Outer Junction, I can tell you.
I've been using Ubuntu for 5 years now on 2 laptops and a Desktop. I'll never go back to M$ Windoze again!