Asklemmy

43856 readers

1834 users here now

A loosely moderated place to ask open-ended questions

Search asklemmy 🔍

If your post meets the following criteria, it's welcome here!

Open-ended question
Not offensive: at this point, we do not have the bandwidth to moderate overtly political discussions. Assume best intent and be excellent to each other.
Not regarding using or support for Lemmy: context, see the list of support communities and tools for finding communities below
Not ad nauseam inducing: please make sure it is a question that would be new to most members
An actual topic of discussion

Looking for support?

Looking for a community?

Lemmyverse: community search
sub.rehab: maps old subreddits to fediverse options, marks official as such
[email protected]: a community for finding communities

~Icon~ ~by~ ~@Double_[email protected]~

founded 5 years ago

MODERATORS

[email protected]

If you were the boss of a group of intergalactic explorers, what would you use as the "North" on the space compasses? (lemmy.ml)

submitted 1 month ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

31 comments fedilink hide all child comments

On Earth, the cardinal directions are straightforward. The arrow on a compass points to the nearest magnetic pole. You can then use it to travel anywhere on Earth.

In space, the idea of anything being "central" enough to be used as a "North" (since the universe has no center) or being fixated enough to not somehow pose issues is more convoluted.

If you were a pioneer of space exploration, what would your "North" be?

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 month ago

We could assign it to any point within a recognizable region in the Cosmic Microwave Background, which would probably be the most universally-applicable reference available. One just needs to be able to filter out the noise from surrounding celestial bodies. The CMB does slowly change over time, but so too does the position of stars within galaxies and galaxies relative to one another.