Friday, March 21, 2003

While fooling around with some numbers an interesting coincidence struck me -- the number of astronomical units (the average Earth-Sun distance) in a light-year (the distance light travels in a year) is 63241. 63360, number of inches in a mile, is amazingly similar. This gives a nice way to think about the scale of the solar system and local cluster.. If the Earth-Sun distance was an inch, the diameter of the Sun would be under 1/100 of an inch. The average Sun-Pluto distance would be 39 inches (very close to a meter!). Proxima Centauri, the nearest star (and a very dim red dwarf) would be a bit over 4 miles away. Moving to twenty miles there are about 100 stars (Sirius is one of the few significant members of the group). A bit of hunting turned up a nice 20 light-year map. Most of the bright stars in the sky are within a few thousand light years, so one can imagine a sphere about the diameter of the US.. Moving beyond the local cluster starts to get into large numbers ... The Milky Way is about 90000 light-years across .. on our scale that would be 40% of the way to the moon - if you include the recently discovered halo of the Milky Way, the diameter is very close to the Earth-Moon distance. Space is really big and sparse. 8:56:41 AM     Frank notes that the United Way is getting into the Internet access and training business in a big way in West Philadelphia. The idea is to build a few 802.11b hotspots, give away or subsidize PCs to low income people, and sell access for $5 to $10 a month. I've worked on this type of project in a few areas and note that success is possible but difficult. I hope this works for them as we are at the point where much of the information these folks need for dealing with various agencies is now online. Training was always the problem we faced, but computers are improving and kids are getting exposure in schools. 8:02:52 AM     Satellite terminals seem to have made dramatic progress. A bit of searching turns up a Swedish company that supplies one of the standard units being used by journalists. This sort of link isn't cheap, but lacking good land lines, is the only game in town. 6:31:04 AM     Clear Channel has become a near monopoly radio outlet thanks to a rewrite of station owning regulations. It is interesting that they have been sponsoring certain rallies. 6:30:31 AM

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