JL Bradley Kanook December 25th, 2012

How does one define far? Although you probably didnt consider the distance when you were still learning how to navigate on your two legs, the distance between one object you stood next too, to another was far. To a person as they advanced in years, the walk between classrooms from test to test might have been far, and as your life progressed the distance between events in your past became so short they seemed to have happened during the last day or so. There is one definition of far that remains far, the distance between objects you see as you stand outside on a clear night you head tilted up peering at the twinkling lights looking back at you, some like the moon dont seem as far away since our society has walked on its surface, and the sun although is some 93 million miles away, were not in any particular hurry to step on its surface. Last night a jolly old gentleman his vehicle stuffed with this and that, kissed his wife of too many to count years, shouted out a gentle command to his reindeer and they leaped into the midnight sky on a long journey around our home world, his goal to deliver packages of love and cheer to the youngat-heart. His long journey made with assistance of a twinkling flash of the eye thereby reducing what some might believe was far. I now reside in Kenitra, Morocco whereas my siblings mostly live in and around Seattle, USA which puts me some 5,533 miles southeast of my home town, some might consider that far, but with todays jet travel, with a little over 12 hours gate-to-gate time, we would be sitting together exchanging

stories and laughter about the times gone by. Another good comparison is the average distance a student makes on its first solo flight in an airplane, for the first time they sit in the cockpit of their trainer, knees knocking as the planes engine pulls it away from the Earth, the landing seeming far as they line on their final approach. Years after Im no longer walking about on this planet it is believed that our society will travel within our solar system, and many years from now outside of its boundaries, whereas today many believe that any such travel will only come about because our race will search for more rare minerals and whatnot to increase their pocketbooks or the wealth factor. This factor, as history demonstrates, was the primary reason some of our ancestors voyaged away from their homes sailing off into the deep sea with no shoreline to guide them. We look back at this daring deed as being one of trade, but as time moved forward where it might have fulfilled their desire to accumulate more riches it in most cases their travels raised a bit of havoc across the lands of the indigenous occupants they met. Science fiction takes the reader into the far reaches of space today, where if youre of the mindset you can sit in your favorite chair and as you read the imaginative stories of creative authors, you in your solitude can journey where no man on our planet has gone before, if not inclined to reading you might watch a movie that drags you into a well constructed world of tomorrow you might. At sometime today you might have the privilege to watch a young child as they rip into a package stuffed with love and care, when you look at the child look not at them as children but maybe the future parents or grandparents of a person that one-day might be living on lets say Mars or maybe on a longdistance journey to a distant star and its solar system. A favorite expression of mine is the time it takes the light from the Sun to arrive on the surface of the Earth, a mean distance of 92,955,807.273 miles, a distance our scientists label as one astronomical unit or (au), whereas the protons take some 8 min and 19 seconds to bump into our rock. The planet that has been in the news lately, Mars sits some 12 minutes and 40 seconds by the way of the proton from the Sun, a distance that translates into a radio

wave traveling between Earth and Mars on average of about 4 minutes and 22 seconds. As our future moves outward outside of the influence of our Sun our spaceship encounters the Termination Shock, the point where the solar wind slows down to a subsonic speed as it slams into the interstellar medium. A point that is on average some 82.5 AU from the Sun, or some 7.67 billion miles just think in reality the ship is just beginning to break the influence of our Solar System or over 28 days from Earth traveling at the speed-of-light, or 186,282 miles per second, or as you can understand in a hourly measurement around 9.3 million MPH.

To put the distance into perspective Voyager 1 was launched on Sept 5th, 1977 and after operating for 35-years, 3-months and 13-days (December 18th, 2012) it now sits within the heliosheath the outermost layer of the heliosphere, being at the breaking point of the Suns influence consider that since it has been launched it has traveled over 123 AU or 11.434 billion miles. On September 9th, 2012 it is calculated that Voyage 1 is moving along at 38,120 MPH, and that it takes the protons from the Sun some 16.89 hours to bounce off its surface. Now we know that our closest neighboring star is Proxima Centauri at 4.2 light years, at it present speed it will take 17,565

Earth years for Voyage 1 to travel one-light-year, think! It will take some 73,337 years for Voyage 1 to drift by Proxima Centauri, if it were headed in that direction. Now that is faranother theory pushes to the top where Einstein said it is impossible to travel faster than the speed-of-light, whereas if an object with a rest mass that in order for it to reach the speed of light an infinite amount of energy would be necessary in other words the upper limit of any object with mass is the speed-of-light. It has taken over 35-years for Voyager I to reach 21% the speed of light, our rocket scientists calculate with maybe a fusion engine we will reach maybe 54% the speed-of-light in a shorter period of time, big deal so what it will only take in the neighborhood of 39,000 years to reach Proxima Centauri. There is no doubt in my mind that someday our society will once cruise the vast distances between the stars, that is if we survive our path of mutual destruction windings it way among us today. It may be another 100, 500, or 1000 years from today, where some distant human will conceive of a way to bend time or space and off well go, my only hope is that during the timespan we learn to respect those far off worlds we land onthey just might be a little more advanced than we are and just may not like some wealth driven group pushing their medicine wagon down their front street hawking this elixir or that one.

Merry Christmas