It depends on how fast you're traveling.

Light can travel from here (Dallas) to New York City in less than a second.

But nothing, including planets, travels at the speed of light.

Although NYC is one "light-second" away from Dallas, the time it takes to travel from Dallas depends on whether you're flying in a jet (4 hours), driving (2 days), or walking (4 months.)

It takes light about 8 seconds (4 seconds? someone correct the number of seconds, please) to reach the moon. It takes a rocket about 2 days to reach the moon.

Rockets don't travel at the speed of light.

Brown dwarfs don't travel at the speed of light. Planets travel at 1/20000th the speed of light (or less.) So for every "Light year" you see, figure that it takes that planet 20,000 years to cross that distance.


Mars is just a few "light minutes" away from Earth, yet it takes months for one of our rockets to get there. It takes many weeks for a comet to move from "near Jupiter" to "near Earth" even though the distance is only a few light minutes.


The nearest Brown Dwarf might be 14 light years away, but it is not traveling at the speed of light.

it takes approximately 1.5 seconds for light to travel from the earth to the moon if I recall correctly.

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Sic Transit Gloria Mundi

And all that is assuming that the star is even heading our way, which when you think about all the possible directions it could be travelling in, is very, very, very unlikely.

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...And that, my liege, is how we know the Earth to be banana-shaped. --Sir Bedevere

To which my evil mind asks how unlikely.

Assuming that the speed of light is 5,865,696 x 10 ^6 miles, the object is 45,752,428.8 x 10^6 miles away.

The distance from the sun to Pluto is 369,595 x 10^4 miles.

If we visualize this as a pythagorean triangle with the distance from the sun to Pluto as the opposite and the distance from the sun to the object as the adjacent, tanA = opposite/adjacent where tan A is the angle subtended by the object. Crunching the maths (and assuming my TI calculator works) gives us angle A is 1.4 x 10^-10 degrees. However, thats using a radius for the diameter of the solar system. To calculate the angle subtended for the object to pass within the solar system, we have to double that answer giving us 2.8 x 10^-10 degrees.

Assuming the object is heading in the right plane, the chance of it heading in that angle out of the 360 degrees possible is 360/2.8 x 10^-10 or 1.285 x 10^12.

In other words there is 1 chance in 1,285,000,000,000 that the object is heading on a course that would bring it within the orbit of Pluto - assuminga two-dimensional universe.

However, space being three dimensional, we have to allow for the vertical as well as the horizontal plane so the actual probability is 1 chance in 1,651,225,000,000,000,000,000,000.

All of which is meaningless of course because it doesn't matter how improbable it is since if it is on a collision course, it just means we were incredibly unlucky.

Does anyone have any thought or explanation for SOHO image 19th on Zeta? An anomale to the upper left hand corner.

Haven't seen it, but I'm willing to be my left hand something that it isn't PX.

I'll bet both left hands. Just interested.

Could you please put the link in the thread so folks like Sarah Mc and girl101 could take a look at it then? I'm sure they'll give a fairly thorough analysis.

I'll bet both left hands. Just interested.

oops. I am not sure I am doing this right bu I'll try. [http://www.zetatalk.com/teams/rogue/nancy89.htm][/url]

I'll try again. Sorry to be a pain.

http://www.zetatalk.com/teams/rogue/nancy89.htm

If I recall correctly that's the Pleiades......

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Sic Transit Gloria Mundi

I would say it's most likely solar flare. Far too small to be PX at any rate. Although that little tidbit hasn't slown them down before.

It is a really cool looking photo though. I hope that out of all of this at least some people get pulled into amateur astronomy.

Just read the discussion on the site metioned next to text around image called God something. Wow, there are certainly some converts on this one.

He's talking about this LascoC3 image I think, trying to imply that the large solar prominence in the upper left is actually an outline of PX like a marshmallow over a campfire.

It's a prominence. A flare. They often make arch like shapes like that. You can even see stars through it. Compare with this one to see the same stars in Taurus to the right of the bottom of the Pleiades, some of which was visible THROUGH the "anomaly".

D.

It is comforting to read replies from such sane minds and based in sound knowledge. For some of us who do not have the background you guys, it can be all too easy to get caught up in the doom. But what I cannot understand is when I read for example one guy saying on the "God..." discussion that he finds the images encouraging that PX is nigh. They are willing it to be true.

Well look at this way, if you have staked so much of your emotion and well being on something and then it didn't come true, it would tear you apart. Add to that most of these people feel exceedingly insignificant in today's society and here's a promise of being the new "lords of creation" so to speak. I'm willing to bet that they have to much vested in this and it will take some time to let it go.