quote:
Their mission is to travel around 200,000 light years in less than a year.
I hope that wasn't a straight line distance.
Since [our] galaxy is only 100k LY across, that would put them in the middle of nowhere no matter which way they went.
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Black hole detection:
If your black hole didn't have an accretion disk, and there was nothing in orbit (or even nearby), then it would be difficult to see indeed.
There would be a slight distortion from gravitational lensing around the edge of the hole, but you'd have to be looking right at it.
The ship would be slightly stressed from gravitational shear, but it it was noticeable over the air & people inside, it would be too late anyways...
But the main thing is:
This black hole is in the middle of nowhere, since there is nothing in the area to form an accretion disk. That means you'd have no reason for going there in the first place, & would never be in that position.
If you were travelling through an SE4 warp point to get to a BH system, then you'd have something to compare your movement to.
Since the WP is at a fixed distance from the hole, and likely provides no momentum to your ship, you would immediately start falling towards the hole.
What you would see is the WP moving away from you.
So, you:
A) full thrust for the WP & go home right away.
B) Assume you're being pulled by gravity & not an alien tractor beam, so you thrust sideways and go into orbit.
From your orbit & seeing the motion of the stars, you figure out where the hole is & what its mass is. Having mapped the system, you look for other WPs and then report to the empire for further instructions.
Note that the orbiting of the hole is easy & immediate.
quote:
Black holes are tecnically a pain in the *** to detect,
Well, Black holes are a pain to detect,
sitting on your home planet if you're flying around in your spaceship inside the BH system, and have a WP to compare to, its mindless busywork to detect and map the thing.
[This message has been edited by suicide_junkie (edited 02 April 2001).]