Alex S

I wonder about this for quite some time now and I'm kinda undecided about what to think of it.

Take a simple distance. Earth -> Sun. Light takes ~8 minutes. If you travel at 10% c you need quite some time. But time dilation also is mostly irrelevant. At half the speed of light you need ~16minutes. Time dilation added you are 18.4 minutes in the reference frame. That's good. Now if you go at 70% the speed of light you travel ~ 11.5 minutes. Time dilation again added and you're up to 15.9 minutes. Better than 0.5c.

Now travel at 80%c. 10 minutes travel but you need 16.6 minutes in your reference frame which is more than the 15.9 minutes you'd travel ( in the reference frame ) at 70% the speed of light.

There appears to be a limit between 70 and 80% the speed of light ( in terms of your reference frame ) where you are actually *faster* if you go slower.

Of course you aren't really faster if you ignore the world around you. But that usually always will be relevant since you'd almost always want to be there at 8. Not really fast but 2 days late.

Unless I'm making a mistake there this would effectively limit us to something between 70 and 80% the speed of light for mostly all kinds of conventional travel. This isn't exactly catastrophic since that is quite some speed but there's a difference if you travel to Alpha Centauri in 6 years or in 5.2 years.

Of course ignoring the question why you'd want to do that in the first place.

I quite often see question from other language sections. I.e. U.K. How and why do they end up in the U.S. section? While this is mentioned it's not quite obvious. And some questions that are perfectly fine in a different language section simply make no sense at all or make the guy look like a complete tool.

I.e. 'Who is the U.S. president'. A question that is perfectly fine if you are somewhat politically handicapped and not from the U.S. But in the U.S. this is not a question. It's a statement translating to 'I'm a moron'. And in combination with the rather subtle notice about the origin of this question there is a potential risk for lots of stupid answers for a perfectly fine question.

It's also a source for the notorious 'If you don't like the U.S. don't talk to us' where in fact he didn't.

I don't see how I could actively post or re-post a question to a different language section. At first I thought U.K. questions might get double posted automatically. But on second thought this doesn't make much sense and the number of 'UK' questions is far too low for that anyway.

When I first heard they attacked a German supply ship I thought

this was probably a chartered ship and real bad luck. But after

reading the story it turned out that the attacked ship was pretty

obviously a military vessel with the typical paint job and numbering.

That's like trying to steal a police car with a cop in the passenger seat.

I'm starting to believe they do this on purpose. Military ships all look alike

on the entire planet. It takes some effort to make this kind of mistake.

What happened to McCain's Oct. surprise?

Remember? The Euro-trash doesn't count anyway.

So why make such a wuzz about how many did or

did not attend the Obama speech in Berlin?

Or are you just jealous as McCain can hardly fill

a McD in SC?