Semi-OT: A General Tech Question Thread for me :)

[Suicide Junkie]

And someone just answer one question for me because I honestly don't know the answer: Our solar system is located in one of the arms of the Milky Way's spiral, now does that make it part of the older (first to form) or newer parts of the galaxy?

The sun is 5 billion years old.
It is a 3rd generation star; it contains heavy elements which can only be produced in superheavy stars and supernovae.

The largest stars burn up in less than a billion years. The smallest ones can last nearly forever.


http://astronomy.swin.edu.au/GHZ/GHZmovie.html
The general idea is that it takes longer to make enough heavy elements for rocky planet formation in the outskirts of the galaxy since there are fewer supernovae. But close in, there are too many supernovae, and your planets get scorched too often.

[Wolfman77]

Seems to have alot of newer stars.

"Sol is located 67 ly north of the galactic plane within a roughly 200-ly wide band that is rich in gas, dust, and newborn stars," from this page

http://members.nova.org/~sol/chview/chv5.htm

[Slick]

"north" ???

[Suicide Junkie]

Based on spin and the right hand rule, I suspect.

[Slick]

Then there would be a "south" but no "east" or "west".

[Hunpecked]

"Spinward" and "anti-spinward".

[Slick]

The entire quote is more precise: "... Sol lies less than half way out (26,000 ly) from the galactic center ... on the core-ward side of one of the galaxy's spiral arms named after Orion... Sol is located 67 ly north of the galactic plane ..."

So we have Radius, direction (if you can call in the direction of Orion a true direction) and distance above the galactic plane. That's cylindrical coordinates.

[narf poit chez BOOM]

Slick said:
Then there would be a "south" but no "east" or "west".

In, Out, Up, Down, East, West.

* Niven!