Wikipedia:Wikifun/Round 8/Answers/Question 8

According to spacetime, ds² = dx² + dy² + dz² − c²dt², where t is an interval in time - so I want the distance-equivalence of 1.5 years. According to speed of light, c = 299,752,458 m/s². So -(299,752,458)²(1.5*365.25*86400) (converting years to seconds) is approximately -4.3x10²⁴ meters. (Yes, negative.)

Or you could be talking about six degrees of separation between Here and... somewhere else?

Or: where was Wikipedia 1.5 years ago? Were its servers somewhere else? I can't find this on Wikipedia.

Nickptar 23:24, 17 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Wait, no, that should be sqrt(-(299,752,458)²(1.5*365.25*86400)²), or 1.418x10¹⁶i meters. (Yes, imaginary). I doubt that changes the correctness, though. Nickptar 23:15, 20 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Well, it all depends where you place the origin of your co-ordinate system. Just remember that you're standing on a planet that's evolving and revolving at nine hundred miles an hour... [1] So:

18 months ago, the Earth would have been roughly on the other side of its orbit around the Sun, roughly 2 Astronomical Units, or 300 million kilometres, away;
the Sun would have be roughly 10 billion km back on its orbit around the centre of the Milky Way (18 months×217 km/s);
the Milky Way would have been roughly 30 billion km away (assuming the velocity of around 700 km/s derived from the dipole detected in the cosmic microwave background radiation is correct).

So, take your pick... -- ALoan (Talk) 12:47, 19 Apr 2005 (UTC)

We, royally speaking, were right here, and haven't moved at all. You all may have moved around me. Oh wait: Wikipedia:The universe does not revolve around you. Never mind. FreplySpang (talk) 20:42, 20 Apr 2005 (UTC)

These aren't the answers I'm looking for, but they are interesting nonetheless. It may be worthwhile to visit the articles that are linked to in the answers above; the correct answer can be found at one of them... Eugene van der Pijll 21:25, 20 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Ah, were we are http://www.wikipedia.com ? -- ALoan (Talk) 09:53, 21 Apr 2005 (UTC)

...what is the distance between .com and .org? 15 letters + 3 letters - 6 letters = 12 letters further on. -- ALoan (Talk) 10:41, 21 Apr 2005 (UTC)

As stated in sun, mean distance between the Earth and the sun is 149.6 x 10⁶ kilometers. This is equal to the radius of the Earth's roughly circular orbit. If Earth completes one orbit every year, 1.5 years ago, we would be at an opposite point in our orbit. Therefore, the distance between here, then and here, now is the diameter of the earth's orbit, or twice its radius, or 299.2 x 10⁶ kilometers. - Bryan is Bantman 00:02, Apr 23, 2005 (UTC)

Hint: to find the answer to this question, you'll first have to know what "here" means... Eugene van der Pijll 12:24, 24 Apr 2005 (UTC)

O-kay. Where was Here 18 months ago? Well, for one thing it was on VFD. But I'm not a good enough philosopher to tell you the distance from Earth to VFD. (On some days it's pretty far though.) Hmmm, now there's a picture of the Earth at Here but the eighteen-month-old version has a missing image named "Here.jpg". It was labeled "You are here" - a pretty clear indicator. Walking through the edit history, the person who removed that image on 26 Oct 2003 said, "I don't know about you, but I'm not in the Andromeda Galaxy..." [2] So apparently, eighteen months ago Here spent a few days in the Andromeda Galaxy. Which, according to that article, is "at a distance of approximately 2.9 million light years or 900 kpc, in the direction of the constellation Andromeda." I guess it's like they say, wherever you go, there you are. -- FreplySpang (talk) 18:58, 24 Apr 2005 (UTC)

rents answer

One and a half years? Is that the answer? Found by use of common sense. Rentastrawberry 20:24, Apr 24, 2005 (UTC)

Nope, the correct answer was 2.9 million light years. See also Talk:Here. I think we were in the Andromeda Galaxy from the beginning of the Here article, so that's more than "a few days". Eugene van der Pijll 20:39, 24 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Actually, now that I'm double-checking, it wasn't even a few days. The image was added on 25 Oct 2003 [3] and removed about 23 hours later. FreplySpang (talk) 20:49, 24 Apr 2005 (UTC)

I had not checked, but yes, you're right. But 25 Oct was very close to the start of the article anyway (at least, as a halfway "sensible" article)... It returned a few days later, for a while. IIRC, it was a photograph of the Andromeda Galaxy, with a big red arrow pointing at the supposed location of the solar system. Eugene van der Pijll 20:57, 24 Apr 2005 (UTC)