On Earth, the cardinal directions are straightforward. The arrow on a compass points to the nearest magnetic pole. You can then use it to travel anywhere on Earth.

In space, the idea of anything being “central” enough to be used as a “North” (since the universe has no center) or being fixated enough to not somehow pose issues is more convoluted.

If you were a pioneer of space exploration, what would your “North” be?

  • spittingimage@lemmy.world
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    1 month ago

    I think FTL or even a substantial percentage of it is pure fantasy.

    I used to think FTL was nonsense, but it turns out the universe has a built-in mechanism for time travel at the Planck scale. Particles smaller than the atom swing both ways when it comes to causality and retrocausality.

    Now I think that either FTL is completely impossible at the macro scale or it’ll be so easy we’ll be embarrassed we didn’t have it sooner.