Especially if it's a star of Veronica's Closet

Oh, that ties in nicely with the Milky Way reference as well.

Was Tom Cruise on it and heading towards a Volcano?

That makes no sense... 1.5 M mph with respect to what? Everything is relative in space.

I wish scientists would just admit that they have no freaking clue sometimes. "..its position suggests it was ejected from the Large Magellanic Cloud, perhaps by a massive black hole..." Sure, or perhaps an errant photon torpedo created a quantum wave of tachyon particles.

If they're going to make stuff up, they should at least try to make it interesting.

sorta topical,

ace, if you have a few bucks leftover from the fundraiser, order one of these. Be sure to check out "night mode".

It could be there in time for Christmas. Or Festivus. whatever.

Um,

A mile is a mile, even in space. So is an hour.

That is all.

Dave S.: It probably means in reference to the center of mass of the milky way galaxy.

By the way, there sortuv is a notion of a rest velocity in space. It's the velocity at which the background radiation is roughly the same frequency in all directions.

C'mon Rocketeer. A jet goes 600 MPH. A spacecraft in orbit goes hundreds of thousands of miles an hour. Are you telling me the spaceship's that much faster than the jet?

Once you're in space, your speed is relative to something.

Of course, I'm talking out my ass but it makes sense.

C'mon Rocketeer. A jet goes 600 MPH. A spacecraft in orbit goes hundreds of thousands of miles an hour. Are you telling me the spaceship's that much faster than the jet?

Hate to break this to you, Spongeworthy, but..

yes.

OOPS. Sorry. Above smartass comment was made by me.

I know what you're saying and I expressed this poorly. Let me try again.

If a spaceship breaks orbit with the planet, is it's speed measured by how fast it's thrusters are pushing it or how much space it's covering in an hour? If it's in orbit, do we credit it with the speed of the earth's travel around the sun? If the planet moves around the sun and the sun is flying through space also, what do we gauge it's speed against and how much of that do we credit the object and how much whatever it's orbiting?

Still talking out the ass BTW. Enlighten me.

Ok, look at it this way: Say a space ship is traveling from the Earth to Mars at 1,000,000 mph. Its speed relative to Earth and Mars is 1,000,000 mph. It does not matter that our solar system itself is moving at some high rate of speed through space.

However, if you measure the speed of the spaceship relative to some other star system somewhere outside our solar system, the speed will be something completely different depending on the speed and direction of that star system relative to our solar system.

Think of being in a car and throwing a wad of paper at your sibling in the back seat. The car is traveling at 60 mph, but the relative speed of paper wad is only a few mph (say 10 mph for the purpose of this discussion). But the speed of the paper wad relative to another car on the Autobahn doing 150 mph is another thing altogether. Speed is not absolute, it is relative.

Sponge:

In your question, the Jet would also have all the implict velocity of the earth, the solar system, the galaxy as a whole, the entire expansion of the universe, etc., as part of its speed, too.

I imagine the 1.5 million MPH is over and above such factors. Yes, everything in the universe is moving, but some things, obviously, are moving faster than others.

To put it another way, relative to the sun, I am going about 60,000 miles per hour, but relative to my career, I am going nowhere.

Or something like that.

I space, no one can hear you scream.

Since stars are not born with such large velocities, its position suggests it was ejected from the Large Magellanic Cloud, perhaps by a massive black hole in the Milky Way's closest neighbor.

What does Art Bell say aboout this?

A mile is a mile, even in space. So is an hour.

Well, that isn't exactly true, particularly the second part, but let's assume the premise for a second.

A "mile" is a unit of distance. Distance is a measure of the "space" between TWO POINTS. We know that the star represents one of the two points. What I am asking is "What is the second point?" To measure the "distance" the star travels per unit time, one would need to know that second point.

.its position suggests it was ejected from the Large Magellanic Cloud, perhaps by a massive black hole..."

That leads me to believe that it was measured to be moving 1.5M mph with respect to the position of the LMC.

How much is that in warp speed? warp 8 or warp 9?

Mr. Sulu, answer the Captain: is that warp 8 or warp 9 ?

. . .

Mr. Sulu ?

Ohfergawdssakes Mr. Sulu, will you PLEASE stop rubbing the ensign's crotch and pay attention !?!?

c, or the speed of light = 670 616 629 mph, so this would be about warp 0.0022 (as I understand such things).

Speed is not absolute, it is relative.

So, exactly how do we measure the speed of Ace posting a winner to the bad poetry contest?