Re: FT Taskforce and Fleet Actions

At 10:00 AM August 07, 2001 "Ryan Gill" <rmgill@mindspring.com> wrote:

> I always understood that Earth was going to be uncomfortably close to
> the surface and that Venus was going to get baked to a cinder.
> Mercury would end up inside.

My recollection is that the size of the Sun's red giant phase will
probably
engulf the Earth.  But as we always said in grad school, what's a factor
of
2 between friends?  Especially in astronomy...

> But does the orbital ummmmm retention (?) stay the same? ie do the
> planets orbits alter at all? If not then the gravity well doesn't
> change.

Consider two scenarios: 1) the Earth orbiting the Sun at 1 AU; 2) the
Earth
orbiting a 1-solar mass black hole at 1 AU.  The orbit is the same in
both
scenarios.  Replacing the Sun with a b.h. will not magically suck all
the
planets into it.  1 solar mass is 1 solar mass.  However, close in you
_will_ get weird effects and spacetime _is_ warped much more severely
close
to the b.h. than it is near the Sun.  It's just further out that the
severe
warping smooths out.  That's why a b.h. will have an event horizon, but
the
Sun obviously doesn't...

(SImilar argument, but in the opposite direction, for G2V vs. red giant)

So as far as FTL / hyperspace travel is concerned, you could say the
"higher
order spacetime perturbations" of the denser object lead to a relatively
further stand-off distance for safe hyperspace entry etc. etc. etc.
(hands
waving vigorously...)

Cheers,

Jerry Acord