/sci/ - Science & Math

a better question is, if you can go anywhere why the fuck would you go back to earth, i would want to go to his home planet

Fuck that shit, I'm going to his planet.

I'd tell him that Earth is the most massive object in the universe due to all the fatass americans.

>implying aliens exist
>big assumption
>apply Occam's razor

>>2819394
oh you

>>2819376
Interesting question... Can anyone here answer?

If he's that kind and would go travel 20 million light years just for a stranger, I'd rather stay with him. <3
He sounds amazing.
I'd either make him my lover, or if he's not into that, I will make him my best friend!
We can travel together on his space ship and murrr <3

>>2819407
engineer detected

there's no point in coming back home, because by the time you get there everyone you know will be long dead.

if you have a spacecraft capable of traveling that far out into space it will no doubt have charts of stars and a record of your journey that you can just show the alien

I'd say stick with him for a while until you pick up on his language (if possible)
Then try to use that to communicate to him where your planet is.

someone answer the god damn question.

>>2819418
But it was destroyed and you barely got out alive.

Check random systems throughout the galaxy and land on them to explore its structure, taking pics, making notes and every possible description about where it is located and everything else until we bump into Earth.
If we never find Earth again (99.9...% chance) at least i enjoyed my life better than any human.
If we do find Earth (i know, lol) become the most famous person ever in the history of humanity.

>>2819504
I don't think the alien guy would wanna hang out with you for the rest of his life lol

20 million lightyears? You could already identify your galaxy and the approximate position of your solar system.

Then you could browse his planetary database for a system with a yellow dwarf and eight planets with the characteristics of Earth, Mars, Jupiter etc.

>>2819519

No he wouldn't, just for the rest of my life, it is unlikely that his lifespan will be the same as ours.

>>2819519
chewbacca did

I guess I wouldn't be able to describe where it is.

Fuck, man.

>>2819520
> mfw you can't see the milky way galaxy from 20 million ly away at all

I would write Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy.

I definitely would not go back to Earth for a while.

Look for the andromeda and triangulum galaxy as a recognition site, and from there figure what our milky way galaxy must be (recognizable by the Magellanic clouds).
When arrived, travel around the centre of the galaxy, looking the M16 Eagle Nebula, it's about 1000 lightyears from the sun, so scan the sphere of approx. 1000 lightyears from the nebula for sun-like stars, and pay attention to constellation as they may start appearing familiar when close to our sun.
Keep searching, untill star with more than the usual amount of planets is found (also recognizable by large gas planets being further away from star than usual)
If it's actually the sun you wouldnotice pretty soon, proceed to earth which shouldn't be too hard now.
If it's not the sun, keep searching for sun like stars in area.
Might not work, but it's the best shot you have, unless the alien has a database with all stars and planets.

I tell him to go the planet where he picked up my language.

Hilarity insues as we find out Star Trek was factually accurate in at least one aspect.

>>2819567
You sound like you did this sort of thing before

I don't suppose I memorized the map to earth on the voyager probe?

>>2819533
So you assume the alien can only take you to place you can point at outside the window of the spaceship? You have you never heard of stuff like "computers" and "databases"?

Thanks for applying the Facepalm to your posting, so I don't have to.

20 million light years would mean, i am in a galaxy far far away. That takes away the possibility of showing the alien a picture of the galaxy as seen from earth (or just a sky at night) when he could just run a program that would calculate Sol's position in the milky way galaxy.

I probably could'nt do a shit, even if i had all my hard-drives (which contains tens hundreds of thousands of different pictures, including telescope images).

I believe the only thing i could do is to ask him to drop me to the nearest planet with history of interspecies coexistence and find a register office for immigrants.

>>2819376
>20 million lightyears from Earth

That puts me about as far away as NGC 2903.

Thankfully the Milky Way Galaxy is pretty large compared to everything else in the Local group, except Andromeda. That narrows things down a bit.

From here, I know that Earth is located in one of the spiral arms, between the central galactic bulge and the edge of the disk. Okay, we're getting closer.

Sol is a spectral class G star, which is yellow, and makes up a small fraction of total stars. That helps narrow things down even more.

Next step would probably be to look for landmarks - the only one I can think of is eta carinae which is within a few thousand lightyears of Earth.

From there it's a matter of traveling at faster than light speed, from system to system, looking for the right place via trial and error.

>>2819567
> Look for the andromeda
But where is andromeda

I'm sure the advanced human civilization that is able to travel that far into space would be smart enough to include important details in our own space suits (because by then we would probably meet other significant life forms as well).
Or instead in our own brains.

Something that might be included in this question: You are the first to try a wormhole, and we aren't as smart a civilization as I assumed.
Well this is all great and everything. But don't assume you will survive. You are a pioneer after all.

>>2819594
You don't know, that's why you go look for it, since it's one of the closest things to the milky way that I could recognize, especially with the triangulum galaxy not far from it

>>2819567

Even if the alien possesses a spacecraft with means of intergalactic travel, i doubt he'll have all the time in the world to find your home. I mean he probably has to get to work someday, or get to see his family, clan or whatever.

>>2819585
Do you realize how many galaxies there are? It would take you forever to find yours in such a database, also you could barely see Milky Way from that distance with the most advanced telescope we got today.

I probably wouldn't have a clue as to locate Earth, but if an alien being is kind enough to offer to fly me across the universe just to find my home planet, I would probably do something similar to
>>2819588
considering they had some sort of language translation technology, hence our ability to communicate in the first place.

>>2819376

I'd first land on Comporellon, talk to some of the locals about origin myths and then have sex with the head of inter-planetary travel.
I'd get the location of several planets close to earth from the scientists on Comporellon.

After that I'd head to the three planets suggested by my learned friends.
I'd nearly get killed by dogs on Aurora
Meet a hemaphrodite humanlike race on solaria, they'll try to kill me of course to keep Solaria's location secret but I'll zap them with my brain powers and get the fuck out of there.
Then I'll go to the last planet, find it doesn't have an atmosphere and has some fucking moss crap that grows in the presence of CO2 rapidly. I'll burn that shit with my blaster and run away like a little girl.

Fortuneately the evil moss tells me the location of alpha centauri, I'll have sex with some of the locals and then fuck off back to earth.

Oh yeah I killed the friendly alien and stole his ship at the start.

Tell him to give me a space suit, a bowie knife, a boot, and three bottles of lotion, then tell him to eject me into space.
Then I rain hell upon whatever planet I'm orbiting.

>>2819612
>and says he can drop you off anywhere.
If he can drop me off at some galaxy 13 billion lightyears away, he can also help me search for my home that's only 20 million lightyears away.
Otherwise he's not as kind as expected

>>2819633
But suppose you are the first human his species ever ran into. They might have space charts, but there are simply too many of it. A person with a good astronomical knowledge might get around it by approximation and the help of alien's computer, but an average person probably wouldn't.

>>2819588

So much typos, i have to blame it on alcohol and getting tired.

>>2819615
>also you could barely see Milky Way from that distance with the most advanced telescope we got today.

lolwat

Dude, that's like saying we can barely see the Andromeda galaxy with our most advanced telescopes.

You are incredibly, staggeringly wrong.

20 million light years away, the Milky Way Galaxy is still one of the largest objects in the area, only eclipsed by Andromeda.

>>2819627
>hell is three bottles of lotion, a few ounces of jizz, and a dead body in a burnt up spacesuit

Boy, and here I thought hell was something frightening.

>>2819615
No, I don't know how many spiral galaxies with the size of the Milky Way exist in a radius of 20 million lightyears around earth. Why don't you enlighten us and provide substantial statistics on that?

>>2819417
>>2819417
>>2819417
>>2819417
>>2819417
>>2819417
>>2819417

this you idiots

>>2819711
Bitches don't know bout my warp drive

>>2819703
You're doing it wrong. It's the radius of all the points on the radius of 20 mil. ly around Earth.

So the numbers go up a bit. I'm not sure how much tho

I instead ask to go to his homeworld, where I compile all the knowledge I can and send it on its way to Earth. I'll never make it back home, but with a little luck and a lot of fuel, I'll be able to vastly improve the human condition.

>>2819649
I know a fair bit myself, maybe or maybe not enough to get around, but we'd have to say if it would actually happened.

>>2819724 You're doing it wrong.
In which way?

And if you don't know the numbers, how can you say that this approach is flawed?

Even if you'd be lucky enough to find the milky way, it would still take forever to find Earth.

Better take my chances with alien like >>2819407

>>2819376
I ask him to take my to the Milky way galaxy, and then the solar system. it's not that hard lol

Seeing as I'm twenty million light years from home, I'd first ask: How can you keep me alive for twenty million years?

Then I'd ask: How can you travel faster than light? And how can I prove that mathematically?

Then I'd go home to earth and become ruler of society.

win.

>>2819755

Implying the aliens called it the milky way galaxy.

Fuck retard, what the shit have you done?

>>2819703
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Local_Group
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virgo_Supercluster

There's only a couple hundred galaxies within 20 million lightyears of Earth, and not many of them are the same size as the Milky Way or Andromeda.

What makes things even easier is that the Milky Way and Andromeda are moving towards each other and should collide in a few billion years. Knowing this makes it a lot easier to narrow down the Milky Way from the other nearby galaxies.

I would say: take me to the world created by God, where humans and dinosaurs coexisted harmoniously few years ago.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virgo_Supercluster#Maps

These two maps give fairly good idea about this task.

The second map pictures the area that is 20 mly from earth.

Milky way shouldn't be too hard to find from there.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virgo_Supercluster#Diagrams

Here we have the quide for the rest of the journey.

Mission completed.


>>2819801
Dam you. Still going to post this.

This is why my iphone has a starchart. I'm sure that will be good enough for an alien computer to narrow down the earth

the spacecraft travels at light speed or warp speed? if the speed of light is the best you can do, sir alien, then: shut the fuck up, and back the fuck up
while we fuck this track up
keep rollin 'rollin' rollin 'rollin'.

>>2819839
I read starcraft several times, thinking what good would that do. Finally I managed to read it correctly.

:o

>>2819376

Do you have downs?

Why the fuck would I come back here for?

If I had to suck a million alien hydra-penises I'd stay on that goddamn ship.

>>2819801
Thank you :)

My knowledge about galaxies is pretty limited, but I know that the Milky Way and Andromeda are the largest in a radius of millions of lightyears and that both are spiral galaxies. So when that person wrote "Do you realize how many galaxies there are? It would take you forever to find yours in such a database" I primarily asked to put a stop to his unsubstantiated claims.

However, I appreciate the information. I did not know about the Triangulum Galaxy before. Many thanks!

>>2819857

>I read starcraft several times, thinking what good would that do. Finally I managed to read it correctly.

Wut?

>>2819899
He read "starcraft" instead of "starchart" :D I must admit, I did so too XD

Anyone who denies the existence of sentient life anywhere else in the universe is living in a silly fantasy world.

just show them a copy of the voyager disc. it gives directions to earth using pulsars

>>2819954
How does that work?

>>2819376
"Earth is this large trade hub where everyone is welcome and you get served a variety of services just as a basic "lifeform right". No, you don't know where it is? Give me a list of known multi-species hubs and i might find it"

No fucking way i'm returning to earth if i can help it.

The Milky Way Galexy is 100million light years across, and the Solary System is 25 Million light years from the center of the universe, therrefore you can say that you need to go to the 'galexy local group' and from there to the milky way galexy...

BTW why would you return here? I would go to his home world! I would hope and pray that I would be safe, but the risk is worth it.
Furthermore, in space you have no direction so their is a 20million light year search radius
V = (4/3)pi*r^3
33426545834195400057242.525598094 Light Year Search Volume

I'd tell him i'll find my own way, thankyou.

assuming I find the milky way, what now?

However I manage to get home doesn't matter,
I've really just gotta convince them to help out with this infestation of dark-skinned people on my planet.

I assume that I'd have to do this from memory, so here's my try without looking at wikipedia.

I know that 20 million LY is not in the milkway. I would tell the alien that I lived in a barred spiral galaxy about to collide with a smaller spiral galaxy (milkway + andromeda).

Then upon reaching that galaxy I would tell him to scan the outer third of the stars on the side furthest from andromeda. Only so many would have exactly four gas giants. Two large and two small.

That would lead me to earth after just several solar system visits.

BTW, I would prefer to continue living on earth. Also, any alien willing to travel 20 mil LY just for 1 lost dude would probably be willing to share tech. Time for interplanetary colonization!

>>2820051
>I would tell the alien that I lived in a barred spiral galaxy about to collide with a smaller spiral galaxy

Jokes on you. Andromeda is larger than the Milky Way.

I'd have them download an image of the Voyager record from my mind (and the explanation from wikipedia).

What the Milky Way looks like from 10mil Light Years away.

What the Milky Way looks like from 20mil Light Years away.

>>2819995

>The Milky Way Galexy is 100million light years across

>mfw

From memory:

"The Milky Way is a spiral galaxy about 100,000 light-years across (provide light-year : alien-unit-of-distance here) and is orbited by 2 small globular clusters. 2 million light years away from it and slowly drawing closer is another larger spiral galaxy, about 150,000 light-years across; they will collide in roughly 2 billion years.

In one of the globular clusters a major supernova occurred; the light of that supernova reached my home system in about 1987--14 years ago. That system is roughly 30,000 light-years from galactic center. (triangulation to general area) 5.5 light-years from it is a triple-star-system of 2 average main-sequence stars and a distant dwarf star--the Centauri. A red supergiant star (Betelgeuse) is about 500 light-years away, and the horse-head nebula is about two thousand and in this (drawing of Orion with splotch on belt) position relative to Betelguese when observed from Earth.

Hopefully that'd be enough.

After going through the incredible amount of searching and space travelling it would take to find Earth in that situation the dissapointment of having to wave goodbye to your kind alien buddy would be crushing. That presumes he left you back in the 21st century. If not whats the point in going home at all. It might be passingly interesting to see the far far future but i'd have as much place there as on the aliens homeworld.

>>2820111

Alien replies, "what is a year?"

>>2820114

>mfw

>>2820114
I demonstrate an estimate second by recording how long it takes to say one thousand. from seconds i work up to minutes and so forth and get a close but admittedly flawed demonstration of our time recording systems.

It's rubbish but it's the best i can think of

>>2819376
If he's, by chance, human-like (and if all the other sapient beings on his planet look like him) then, shit, I'd just ask him to take me to his home. It would be just like Earth, but not Earth!

If he's some sort of space monster then, shit, I don't want to meet his people! I'll make my best attempt to explain to him where Earth is.

>>2820155
I think you can get a close approximation by using the energy transition frequency of a Cesium atom which is what atomic clocks use.

>>2820155
Or just show him your watch.

>>2820155

Or use a fucking watch...

>>2820114

>>2820111 here again. It's a better question than it seems like; extrapolating from "one-one thousand" would give you shit-horrible accuracy and you can't exactly say "Hurr, light takes one second to travel 299,000,000(ish) meters" because how the fuck do you explain a meter?

I'll try to work something out from memory only again, but it might take a minute.

>>2820114
Your heartrate is between 60 and and 80 beats a minute in normal cases. Counting 70 beats and defining it as a minute we can extrapolate a year from this fact and get a rough estimate of what a year is timewise. This allows for a constraint on the definition of lightyear and thus enables you to do a rough search of the relevant galaxy.

>>2820187
>>2820177
Brilliant!

I'm still gonna try to think of a way to explain without props, and without looking up the transition frequency of Cesium.

I just look for the north star and tell him to go south of it.

>Medium size star
>8 Planets
>4 rocky
>4 Gas giants
>3rd planet aprox 150,000,000km from star
>Has 1 moon and lots of artificial satelites
>approx 2/3 covered in liquid water
>4th planet has 2 small moons
>6th has epic rings

Should narrow it down a bit

>>2820202
Okay, got it. Lucky thing I know Avogadro's Number...

6.022 x 10^23 atoms of Carbon-12 weigh .012 kg.
1 cubic meter of pure H2O weighs 1000 kg.
Those 2 facts let us establish the meter and the rest is easy math.

>>2820236
>3rd planet aprox 150,000,000km from star

Aliens woud not know what a kilometre is

>>2820263
i'm 1.83m tall, some simple math can convert it to whatever distance units they use

>>2820193
Me again. knowing i'm 1.8 meters in length(or that my erect penis is 16cm) and that light travels roughly 300 000km per second would probably allow for a more precise definition.

Further search parameters would be that our sun is too small to become a black hole. the relevant planet is located approximately 8light-minutes from the star. And that the largest planet in the system have a radius of approximately 70kkms. and Its smaller sibling is located on an orbit further out from the star.

Spending some more time would probably allow for a more narrow search as i remember more information

>A kind alien picks you up and says he can drop you off anywhere.

>How do you explain where Earth is?

He would probably bomb earth from orbit once he sees all the shit that happens on it. If not, i'd ask him to do it.

I don't know why anyone hasn't asked this yet, but at 20 million light years, I think it would be appropriate to ask how I, and the alien, got deep into the empty void of intergalactic space.

>>2820309
A truly masterful practical joke, I'd imagine.

Fuck earth. I want to go to SPAAAAAACE.
Hell yeah, adventure time!
I'll become a space-hitcher, with a big sign "ANYWHERE" and 100$ in my hand.

>>2820303

At that distance you are dead since forever.

interesting question
the answer is that no one can describe the way home
you're stuck there and that's it
no human has the ability to remember the positions of the stars and extrapolate the direction towards earth

but you may have some star maps on your broken spaceship you would need a couple of years to learn how to communicate with them and explain them how your star maps work so that they can merge it with their technology and find your home (which may not be such a good idea. maybe they're playing nice so that the could find our breeding place and exterminate us. yeah i know that's very very unlikely but.. you'll never be sure)

i would just go to their computer and get on wikipedia. from there i could look up tons of facts about the milky way that would narrow the search

>>2820531
>the answer is that no one can describe the way home
>no human has the ability to remember the positions of the stars and extrapolate the direction towards earth

Isn't K-Pax said to be based on a real case?

>>2820810

>mfw you think K-Pax was a true story.

Well shit, that's easy.
*Points*
That way mother fucker.

generally say
the shithole of the universe

As has already been said: Fuck going back to earth.

How far is earth from the center of the universe?

About 14 billion light years. So we have one circle.

We now draw a circle of 20 million light years from where we are.

Where the two circles intersect is home.

I'd tell him i want to go to a Asgard world that isn't in danger of being taken over or attacked by the replicators.
Pic related
This is where i would land. Shit would be so cash.


GODFUCKINGDAMNIT WHY IS THIS NOT REAL FFFF WHY WHY DO I EVEN KNOW THAT THERE ARE OTHER PLANETS WHY CANT I LIVE IN IGNORANCE? WHY WASNT I GROWED UP WITH THE CLAIM THAT THE EARTH IS FLAT AND END JUST 5 KILOMETERS AWAY FROM MY HOUSE? THATS PURE TORTURE KNOWING IT EXISTS BUT NEVER BEING ABLE TO GO THERE

FFFFFFFFFUUUCK

>>2819376
I don't, and I'm fucked. It's a standard <x> star, not a binary, with 4 rock planets, an asteroid belt, and 4 gas giants, which eliminates a lot of star systems, but nowhere near enough.

I could further specify it's in an arm of the spiral galaxy.

Finally, if I was knowledgeable about star constellations, which I'm not, I could try that. Might be possible if I remember enough detail and they have enough star information and enough computing power.

>>2820947
Under the big bang theory, the center of the universe is literally everywhere.

We are not 13.7 billion lightyears away from the center of the universe.

>>2820947
>implying the universe is flat

Fuck OP, I want to see someone write the SQL query to the alien's database to get earth's coordinates
bonus: you can assume the SQL dialect of your choice
double bonus: you can assume you have at least some sort of command line
>yfw when the alien shoves you infront of a computer with a bash prompt staring you in the face

>>2820963
also you don't know the schema beforehand, so if I don't see any variation on show/describe then you auto-fail

Just remember that you're standing on a planet that's evolving
And revolving at nine hundred miles an hour,
That's orbiting at nineteen miles a second, so it's reckoned,
A sun that is the source of all our power.
The sun and you and me and all the stars that we can see
Are moving at a million miles a day
In an outer spiral arm, at forty thousand miles an hour,
Of the galaxy we call the 'Milky Way'.
Our galaxy itself contains a hundred billion stars.
It's a hundred thousand light years side to side.
It bulges in the middle, sixteen thousand light years thick,
But out by us, it's just three thousand light years wide.
We're thirty thousand light years from galactic central point.
We go 'round every two hundred million years,
And our galaxy is only one of millions of billions
In this amazing and expanding universe.

The universe itself keeps on expanding and expanding
In all of the directions it can whizz
As fast as it can go, at the speed of light, you know,
Twelve million miles a minute, and that's the fastest speed there is.
So remember, when you're feeling very small and insecure,
How amazingly unlikely is your birth,
And pray that there's intelligent life somewhere up in space,
'Cause there's bugger all down here on Earth.

I'm probably not going back to Earth. I'll ask him about immigration prospects in his civilization.

If he's got that sort of tech, and doesn't think finding a member of another species is extraordinary, I'll assume there is multi-species civilization I can join. I'd like to learn about that for a bit first, and then he can take me wherever seems appropriate.

>>2820976
DROP TABLE invasion_targets;

>>2820990
I love you. Bumping for awesome.

Easy enough to find Milky way. Find the local group of 30 or so galaxies. The gravitational center is between Milky Way and Andromeda. Smaller Galaxy is milky way. Earth is in a spiral arm opposite Andromeda. You can get distances by knowing your own height and that light travels at 299.7 million metres per second.

Third Planet away from Sol. U Jelly?

Simply point to the planet/galaxy with all the fucking morons in it.

>>2820071
>>2820075
Which program is this? I remember using it in Astrophysics but I can't remember what it's called.