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Too Much Spare Time 
King Slug
Posts: 537
(12/9/02 6:35 am)
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Bad Astronomy in Keen (GEEX ONLY!)
There's a website called "Bad Astronomy" where a guy called Phil Plait puts various "myths about space" to rest. He disproves the theories of those crack-pots who reckon that the moon landings were faked, and that there are evil aliens living on Venus, and that the Sun goes around the Earth, etc.
He also points out all the scientific flaws in sci-fi movies and so on. Quite entertaining. I guess you could call him a modern-day Galileo.
www.badastronomy.com
ANYWAY, I thought I'd open a topic to discuss all the "Bad Astronomy" in the Commander Keen series, like the atmosphere on Mars, and so forth.
So I'll start with: Keen's Trip from Gnosticus IV to Korath III.
From the ending sequence in Keen IV, we know that Korath III is 71,000 light years away from Gnosticus IV.
From the story/intro sequence in Keen V we know that it took Billy some 75 furious games of Paddle War to reach Korath III from Gnosticus IV, travelling at (quote) "light speed" (unquote).
From various astronomical resources, we know that the speed of light is 3x10^8 m/s, and that one light year is 9.46x10^15 m. (That's metres, not miles!)
A little calculation and we find that Billy's journey, assuming that he travelled the entire way at lightspeed, took 2.23886x12 seconds, which is about 70943 and a half ... YEARS.
So if Billy played Paddle War the entire way, the average length of a game would be about, oh, just under 946 years.
Y'know, I would've expected more effort from iD, with all the detail that they put into this game's storyline.
Fixed link - Flaose
The Chasm of Strife! www.ThisStrife.com/Sluggy Edited by: Flaose at: 12/9/02 10:57:27 am
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KeenEmpire
Keen's Empire
Posts: 476
(12/9/02 10:50 am)
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s
Strangely, however, "light speed" can also refer to faster than light speeds. Do you remember a vague scene in Star Wars IV when they say "prepare to make the jump to light speed?" They're actually about to go into hyperspace, which is much faster than light speed, but they say that just the same. Why? Who knows. Possibly because it is a mark in the middle of everything, and saying "Prepare to make the jump to 210238454946 times lightspeed" is a teeny bit annoying.
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KeenRush 
Garg
Posts: 1520
(12/9/02 3:21 pm)
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Re: s
So, Keen must be older than he looks.. 
The universe is not toast! |
Snaily
Messie
Posts: 683
(12/9/02 4:39 pm)
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Re: s
Quote:
From the ending sequence in Keen IV, we know that Korath III is 71,000 light years away from Gnosticus IV.
From the story/intro sequence in Keen V we know that it took Billy some 75 furious games of Paddle War to reach Korath III from Gnosticus IV, travelling at (quote) "light speed" (unquote).
From various astronomical resources, we know that the speed of light is 3x10^8 m/s, and that one light year is 9.46x10^15 m. (That's metres, not miles!)
A little calculation and we find that Billy's journey, assuming that he travelled the entire way at lightspeed, took 2.23886x12 seconds, which is about 70943 and a half ... YEARS.
So if Billy played Paddle War the entire way, the average length of a game would be about, oh, just under 946 years.
Why all the unneccesary calculations? 71'000 lightyears at light speed takes 71'000 years (duh).
And that is in the outside world. You'd experience time dilation that would make the games shorter inside the ship (formulas, anyone?).
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¨@_ |
 chogall
Vorticon Elder
Posts: 1146
(12/9/02 8:27 pm)
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ezSupporter
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Re: s
The story doesn't say that Keen travels at light speed - it says that he is "dropping out of lightspeed" upon arriving to the Korath system.
So what happens is: Keen is going at several times light speed. Then, before arriving to Korath III, the BWB starts slowing down. Assuming that the BWB's negative acceleration is continuous, the intermediate-value theorem states that there must be a moment when the BWB is at light speed exactly. Thus, there must also be a moment when the BWB goes from light speed to sublight speed, thus "dropping out of lightspeed".
BTW, the formula for time dilution is t' = t / sqrt(1 - u^2 / c^2))
where t is the time elapsed for the observer, and t' is the time of an object moving at speed u relative to the observer.
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Flaose
Pooper, King of the Slugs
Posts: 517
(12/10/02 4:28 am)
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Re: s
The old twins trick...
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Cerebral Cortex 314 - For All of your Commander Keen Needs. |
John
Vortininja
Posts: 86
(12/12/02 11:43 pm)
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Re: s
Quote:
And that is in the outside world. You'd experience time dilation that would make the games shorter inside the ship (formulas, anyone?).
According to Einstein (who was an old crackpot  ), at exactly the speed of light the time perceived by the traveler would be none, and therefore for Keen the trip to Vorticon would take no time. Talk about fast games of PaddleWar.
However to an outside viewer it would be as you said.
John, a.k.a. Twilight Dragon
joeubank@hotmail.com
classickeen.virtualave.net |
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