I have seen a few questions regarding how orbits and rotations work, so I thought I would post this link. The site Alien Worlds is a part of University of Glamorgan's Difference engine. All of the podcasts are available for free at Itunes. and include:
Retrograde Orbits
The Structure of Our Sun
Jovian Moons
Solar Eclipses
Lunar Eclipses
Milky Way
Our Solar System
Orion Nebula
More
I think you might find them useful. They are for me anyway. It is much easier for me to understand something I can see.
[This message has been edited by Bent Tree (edited March 19, 2010).]
Posted by billawaboy (Member # 8182) on :
Cool! Thanks for the great link. Also is the aliens world link just the astronomy? I don't see any astrology included...
Posted by Bent Tree (Member # 7777) on :
I mistyped it in the heading and can't edit. Kathleen may come and save me from my embarassment at some point.
Posted by KayTi (Member # 5137) on :
Sweet! Sounds very cool!
Posted by Kathleen Dalton Woodbury (Member # 59) on :
Is that how you want it to read, Bent Tree?
Posted by billawaboy (Member # 8182) on :
I like the idea of a Galactic Year mentioned on the website and sourced to wiki (isn't everthing?, just call it encyclopedia galactica already...):
It is the duration of time required for the solar system to orbit once around the center of the Milky Way galaxy!
Timeline of earth's history in galactic years
In this list, 1 galactic year (GY) = 225 million years
* 0 GY: Birth of the Sun * 4 GY: Oceans appear on Earth * 5 GY: Life begins * 6 GY: Prokaryotes appear * 7 GY: Bacteria appear * 10 GY: Stable continents appear * 13 GY: Eukaryotes appear * 16 GY: Multicellular organisms appear * 17.8 GY: Cambrian explosion * 19 GY: Great Dying * 19.6 GY: K–T extinction event * 19.999 GY: Appearance of modern humans * 20 GY: Present day
Now that's awesome!
Posted by Bent Tree (Member # 7777) on :
Thank you Kathleen
Posted by Bent Tree (Member # 7777) on :
Conversions are cool. I have a notebook full of them that goes back by about six years. Thats approximately 52560 hours btw.
I have metric conversions from various recipes and scales to distance measures of the solar system, but mainly bio and chem conversions for lab work.
Posted by billawaboy (Member # 8182) on :
you know i always wondered about the position of the galaxy, our sun, and planet with respect to time travel. If we go back to 50 years ago, how many million miles and in what direction would we have to orient ourselves since everthing is moving or rotating - the way time travel is now we'd end up in cold dead space or worse - inside our sun or a planet.
Posted by Teraen (Member # 8612) on :
Totally off topic, but billaboy there is a really cool short story about that called "A Conversation With Schliegelman" that uses this as part of its plot. Very cool story, one of my favorites, in fact. Dig up an old anthology of WOTF (vol 16) from the local library and read it...
Posted by billawaboy (Member # 8182) on :
cool! I'm at my parents right now and just wish my library here carried anything scifi - or that I was back in the states to buy a copy of WOTF. I wonder if I could buy ebook versions of all the WOTFs? do they sell it electronically?
Posted by Teraen (Member # 8612) on :
No. It looks like the button on Amazon says "tell the publisher I want this on Kindle!"
...implying, of course, that it isn't yet available on electronic version. The bright side is that a copy was for sale for only seven cents, so I'm pretty sure you could get one shipped to... where the heck are you?