Ralph's Astronomy Page

Probably all the organic beings which have ever lived on this earth have descended from some one primordial form, into which life was first breathed....There is grandeur in this view of life...that, whilst this planet has gone cycling on according to the fixed law of gravity, from so simple a begining endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful have been, and are being, evolved. Charles Darwin, The Origin of Species.

The stars of the Milky Way move with systematic grace. Globular clusters plunge through the galactic plane and out the other side, where they slow, reverse and hurtle back again. If we could follow the motion of individual stars bobbing about the galactic plane, they would resemble a froth of popcorn. We have never seen a galaxy change its form significantly only because it takes so long to move. The Milky Way rotates once every quarter billion years. If we were to speed the rotation, we would see that the Galaxy is a dynamic, almost organic entity, in some ways resembling a multi-cellular organism. Any astronomical photograph of a galaxy is merely a snapshot of one stage in its ponderous motion and evolution. The inner region of a galaxy rotates as a solid body. But, beyond that, like the planets around the Sun following Kepler's third law, the outer provinces rotate progressively more slowly. The arms have a tendency to wind up around the core in an ever-tightening spiral, and gas and dust accumulaate in spiral patterns of greater density, which are in turn the locales for the formation of young, hot, bright stars, the stars that outline the spiral arms. These stars shine for ten million years or so, a period corresponding to only 5 percent of a galactic rotation. But as the stars that outline a spiral arm burn out, new stars and the spiral pattern persists. The stars that outline the arms do not survive even a single galactic rotation; only the spiral pattern remains.

Traveling close to the speed of light you would hardly age at all, but your friends and your relatives back home would be aging at the usual rate. When you returned from your relativistic journey, what a difference there would be between your friends and you, they having aged decades, say, and you having aged hardly at all! Traveling close to the speed of light is a kind of elixir of life. Because time slows down close to the speed of light, special relativity provides us with a means of going to the stars. But is it possible, in terms of practical engineering, to travel close to the speed of light? Is a starship feasible?..

This is only a small part of my original page,
you can see my Astronomy page in it's entirety at:
http://www.geocities.com/CapeCanaveral/LaunchPad/3714
My Astronomy page has won many awards, here are a couple

Rated 5 stars by Webratings, Australia's largest rating Service!

2nd Place Powwow Hall of Fame May 16, 1997!

This page best viewed with