Date: Wed, 13 Mar 2002 14:52:20 -0800
From: Michael Andre-Driussi 
Subject: (urth) Green's Diameter II

New experiment: we want to see how far away Earth-like planets would be in
order to have an angular diameter about equal to the Moon and the Sun seen
from Earth (0.52 degrees).

Three planet sizes: Small, Medium, Large.

                  ANGULAR      EST. DISTANCE     SAME
                  DIAMETER @   FOR ANGULAR       DISTANCE
       DIAMETER   105,000 mi   DIAMETER = 0.52   IN LEAGUES
SMALL   6,200 mi  3.38 deg.      700,000 miles   233,333
MEDIUM  8,000 mi  4.37 deg.      900,000 miles   300,000
LARGE  10,000 mi  5.46 deg.    1,055,000 miles   351,667


This experiment is to help us all visualize what we are talking about.  I
only picked the target angular-diameter of 0.52 because of the familiar
size for us Earth-bound.

Regarding the problem of distance for the inhumi to fly across.  Well, we
had earlier on more or less agreed that there were some serious technical
problems with flying across--actually, granting an ability to survive
vacuum during the transit was the easiest part . . . the hardest parts
seemed to be escape velocity and surviving re-entry.

At the time, iirc, we here decided to file it under magic and see what
developed.  Sure enough, there were suggestions in RTTW that "flight" was
maybe an easy cover-story for the humans.  So what do they =really= do?  I
don't know, but they seem to be lying about it!

Anyway, the thing seems magical/impossible no matter what the distance is,
and in this sense distance doesn't really matter (although if one believes
the inhumi have a distance-limited teleporation ability, then yes, distance
defines it).

=mantis=



--