Re: Humor: Years and light-years.

From: Eliezer S. Yudkowsky (sentience@pobox.com)
Date: Thu Sep 11 1997 - 23:30:35 MDT

Next message: Eliezer S. Yudkowsky: "Re: Eliezer at 18"
Previous message: Anders Sandberg: "Re: Extropianis (Protestants in Disguise?)"
In reply to: Damien Broderick: "Re: Humor: Years and light-years."
Messages sorted by: [ date ] [ thread ] [ subject ] [ author ] [ attachment ]

Damien Broderick wrote:
>
> [sending via lucifer after bouncing from extropy.com - gak!]
>
> At 08:16 PM 9/10/97 -0500, Eli wrote:
>
> >Or, moving light-years during a single advance (which presumably takes only a
> >few months to develop) would require a large Tau factor, meaning that you
> were
> >going close to the speed of light and time would slow down.
>
> Small Tau factor. Vanishingly small as you approach c. (Which is why Poul
> Anderson called his classic novel of a runaway Bussard starship *Tau Zero*.)
>
> Damien Broderick

I was actually thinking of 1/Tau, I suppose. It's easier to visualize a
billion, or a "factor of a billion", than a billionth.

-- 
         sentience@pobox.com      Eliezer S. Yudkowsky
          http://tezcat.com/~eliezer/singularity.html
           http://tezcat.com/~eliezer/algernon.html
Disclaimer:  Unless otherwise specified, I'm not telling you
everything I think I know.

Next message: Eliezer S. Yudkowsky: "Re: Eliezer at 18"
Previous message: Anders Sandberg: "Re: Extropianis (Protestants in Disguise?)"
In reply to: Damien Broderick: "Re: Humor: Years and light-years."
Messages sorted by: [ date ] [ thread ] [ subject ] [ author ] [ attachment ]

This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.5 : Fri Nov 01 2002 - 14:44:52 MST