Originally posted by bullet1968
Steve,
Derby?? (Darby), I have cousins living, or used to live there!!! My Nanna's clan come from the Midlands, I donna belleev it. And I live near Midland in Perth, named after the mother country......bahahaha
Ah, cool. Yeah I live in Derby (Darby). Some great history with Australia and the "mother Country".
As for your points on navigation... I agree. It would be extremely hard to predict the location of point B. I can imagine it would be done with lot of complex algorithms and some even more complex maths.
But I think a lot of it would have to do with observation. Much as we observe exoplanets now. We would study it for a few years, gaining insight into it's orbital behavior, and slowly plotting a pattern, which can be followed with moderate accuracy.
What we also need to take into account is that 1,000 years (the time it takes for light to travel from point B to point A (Earth)) is not very long at all in terms of planets and Stars. We could study the the Planet's Star and look for signs of aging, we could also look for markers of a dying star, increased temperature (above the normal expected temperature). And even if such anomalies are detected, 1,000 years is like a day to a Star... nothing major will have happened. We have to remember that our Star has been burning for Billions of years!
But of course there is still a lot of risk, and a probe would be send out long before a person would ever be flown there.
Of course though, if wormhole technology is developed, we could send a probe there in the blink of an eye. And we would know the exact state of the planet.
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Last edited by Mayaniac; 02-05-2010 at 01:32 PM.