Sunday 31 March 2019

Galaxy Eater?

Poul Anderson, Tau Zero, CHAPTERs 9, 14 and 15.

With her selectors readjusted, the endlessly accelerating Leonora Christine consumes not only hydrogen atoms but also gas, dust and meteoroids. If she circles indefinitely - becoming ever more massive - within the galaxy, will she eventually consume it?

Apparently not. The cyclical universe of this fictional timeline will collapse long before that happens and, meanwhile, the ship remains astronomically unlikely to collide with any significant mass.

The Leonora Christine traverses the galactic center in twenty thousand years, mere hours for the crew.

Addendum, later the same evening: This is the time of month when I pause this blog and post on another. See here. Normal service will be resumed tomorrow at the beginning of a new financial year and of the eighth year of my retirement.

9 comments:

Sean M. Brooks said...

Kaor, Paul!

If Bussard style ram jet spaceships are ever made in our real world, might some accident similar to that suffered by the "Leonora Christine" cause it to undergo a similar fate? If so, I hope the crew shows as much courage, resilience, an ingenuity as we see them doing in TAU ZERO.

Sean

Ketlan said...

I thought the new UK tax/financial year always started on April 6th? I'm sure it did when I had to keep the books for various places I used to work. Mind you, that was a long time ago...

paulshackley2017@gmail.com said...

I thought 1st April but maybe I'm wrong.
I've just read to where Wednesday and Shadow arrived at the House on the Rock and Shadow has seen the gods.

paulshackley2017@gmail.com said...

Google confirms 6 April.

Ketlan said...

'I've just read to where Wednesday and Shadow arrived at the House on the Rock and Shadow has seen the gods.'

I watched whe whole thing again in an attempt to see where I got the idea that Shadow met TWO gods in prison but no evidence for that appeared despite the two billion flashbacks. Presumably, I dreamed that bit.

'...the House on the Rock'

What an AMAZING place. Bizarre and real.

paulshackley2017@gmail.com said...

But, in prison, Sam Fetisher tells Shadow that a storm is coming.

Ketlan said...

I suspect this only happened in the book - NOT the series.

paulshackley2017@gmail.com said...

Yes. See you tomoz.
The TV adaptation is a serial, not a series.

Anonymous said...

"...The Leonora Christine traverses the galactic center in twenty thousand years, mere hours for the crew."

Sorry, but while PA mentioned somewhere in T0 about means of minimizing the effects of high acceleration, the Relativistic Starship Calculator
(http://convertalot.com/relativistic_star_ship_calculator.html)says:
distance Light Yrs 20,000
acceleration: Earth Gs 50,000
time on earth: Years 20,000.038759652366
time on board: Days 0.19603181146564227

I don't believe "Elsie" can pull 50k Gs....

-kh