How would you find your way back?

Hypothetical situation.

Lets say Bad aliens abduct/capture you and take you far from earth. Later unknown light-years later good aliens release you from captivity and take pity upon you. You every wish is fullfilled, but you end up getting homesick and want to get back to earth

How would you be able to tell them where earth is, when they show you a map of the Galaxy with a "you are here" arrow pointing to the middle?

What if you were in a galaxy outside the local group?

I know the Pioneer and Voyager probes had directions on them using distances to nearest pulsars. But would they really help you? or is there another way?

I think you would need A LOT of luck... Once you're more than a few light years away, the stars have all seemed to change position, so there would be no way to use them to get back.

Aliens capable of travel between universes and showing you a 2 dimensional map would testing your intellect. Tell them to stick that map up their kazottie and get out the GPS or in this case the UPS.

After you failed to comprehend how it works, it might be possible to bribe them to show you the way home if you promise to take them to that great pizza place in Ann Arbor.

Intriguing question Mr. J

[edit on 16-7-2005 by whaaa]

Well I seem to remember that our solar system is about 2/3 of the way away from the center of our galaxy. But I wouldn't know which spiral arm it was on.

But yea, after about 200 light years there is a very small chance of reconizing any constilations

The other thing I could think of is our solar system relation to andromeda, the galactic core and the magellanic clouds. That is 4 points to work on a rough triangulation tho I am not sure if I was off by 1 degree on all of them how much of a search area would be left

If you know the constellations that make up the signs of the zodiac (I do not), then you might have a chance. These constellations ring the Earth approximately in the plane of the ecliptic. If you could get a sidelong view of our galaxy, and your position was somewhere in the Milky Way about 1/3 of the way in, you should be able to recognize one of these constellations, although the others would certainly be re-arranged from your point of view. If you were directly across the galaxy from Earth, there may be too much material between you and the Solar System to recognize any constellation. If after a time, no recognizable (zodiac) constellations can be discerned, go about 1/4 of the way around the galaxy and try again.

Plot a course toward the recognizable constellation (remember, it has to be one of the zodiac constellations) and stop every so often. Look around and see if any of the other zodiac constellations are coming into shape to the left and right of the one you recognize. Lather, rinse, repeat.

Once you are in a position where you can recognize all 12 zodiac constellations, you are near enough to Earth to start looking for Jupiter and Saturn. Good luck.

Harte

psychotronic or radionic based technology

our body frequency...

the human body resonate with the Earth bio-rythm. so if one is able to find a way/tech that can find/match a planet with particular frequency that closely matches his own...then one would be able to find oneself back home...

Advance tech is require I suppose!

Depends how long you been gone and how fast you've been travelling. Einstein stated that as you travel faster, you're time slows compared to someone on earth.

The earth is surrounded in all directions by outgoing radio waves which travel at the speed of light and this is roughly 200 light years diameter with the earth at the centre.....ie since radio broadcasts began.

So currently, if their tech was good and you were within 100 light years of earth they should be able to locate the source of the radio waves.

However if you were abducted today, and travelled at near light speed for some years until you wanna come home, then the earths outgoing radio waves would be much further out into space due to your time passing slower than that of earth. You could be further away and still be able to find earth.

So the later you leave the abduction, and the faster they travel, the better your chances of being able to locate earth are.

as long as they have lots of women, food and tv i dont care to come back aspecialy if bush is president. but id take a gps system with me and make sure they deliver me to my house

Find a familiar nebula...

The perspective would be different so, for instance, the Horsehead Nebula wouldn't look the same, but a big hunk of glowing dust should look like a big hunk of glowing dust from just about any angle. Nearly each nebula is different so even with this skewed perspective they should still be readily identifiable.

We know about how far we are from the center of the galaxy, so triangulate with the alignment of the nebula as a reference and you're set.

> oh and yeah... dont forget to take into account the fact that everything we see has moved a little ways from where we see it. But the aliens should have cool calculators for that.





[edit on 16-7-2005 by apc]

Unless those who freed you knew how to get you home, you just might be stuck.

Unfortunately most of us have no idea where we are outside of our own solar system. So if this happens to you and you are not an astronomer i suggest getting comfy with your surroundings, or stealing a whole bunch of their tech and taking a hostage who can get you home.

Originally posted by whaaa
Aliens capable of travel between universes and showing you a 2 dimensional map would testing your intellect. Tell them to stick that map up their kazottie and get out the GPS or in this case the UPS.

After you failed to comprehend how it works, it might be possible to bribe them to show you the way home if you promise to take them to that great pizza place in Ann Arbor.

Intriguing question Mr. J

[edit on 16-7-2005 by whaaa]

My apologies, but I have to say that I found this terribly amusing in it's profundity!

THe Record cover used for the Voyager probe has a diagram that defines the location of our sun using 14 pulsars of known directions from our sun. The binary code on each ray defining the frequancy of the pulses

Maybe that would be useful to have as "directions" to get back home

because once you go a few hundred lightyears from our sun, constilations and even transmitions from earth would be useless to track down it's location

Easy solution build the solar system a huge space becon, if we are lost in space look for the signal that we built and wala were home

Just tell them to follow the path to where all the high frequency porn is being emmited.

Originally posted by cmdrkeenkid
I think you would need A LOT of luck... Once you're more than a few light years away, the stars have all seemed to change position, so there would be no way to use them to get back.

yep..its nearly impossible..
we have not learned about universe geo,and an universe geo is like on earth except its where u use in universe.

so in that case we cant get back.

If aliens took me across the galaxy, and then told me they'd take me back, considering it takes 100,000 years travelling at the speed of light to cross the galaxy, then it would probably take about 50,000 years at light speed to get to the center. Since modern physics says things made of matter can't travel that fast, I would first ask them if Earth was going to be about 100,000 years older when I got back.

Then I'd tell them, if they were acting serious about a map, to get real and get some real technology, after all, THEY BROUGHT ME ACROSS THE GALAXY, how in he** am I supposed to know where Earth is!?

Err, the Zodiac constellations are totally useless once you get any distance from where we are. They just dont look the same from a different angle so it wouldn't help much. Better to have a solid knowledge TODAY of the heavens as we know it, and then to plot a course based on our location relative to, for example, the galactic core, the outer spiral arms, the crab nebula, the horsehead nebula, and other notable spatial phenomena. Our sun is remarkably common and not at all a feature one would notice from a distance. Radio emissions from Earth haven't traveled very far yet and would not help much until you are relatively close.

I don't think there would be any easy way to find you way back. If these good aliens have ewxplored a decent area of the Galaxy, they must have a database of Worlds and pictures too I would assume. Do a basic drawing of Earth and the Solar system and they could look it up and find what it matches best... It would probably take a while to find it exactly.

I can't really think of any other ways that one could distinguish our star or solar from others besides that really. Being the sci fi geek I am.. I wouldn't mind having to fly around and explore the galaxy a bit before finding home anyway.

I got this idea from reading ALan Dean Foster's "LOst and Found" and "THe Light-years beneath my feat" Which describes the scenario

Having FTL space travel availble without time dilation changes things alot. If you could tarvel 20k light years in the span of a few week you could get lost very easily

I still think using measurements of the location of the SMC, LMC, and andromeda would be a big help

Originally posted by Jehosephat
I still think using measurements of the location of the SMC, LMC, and andromeda would be a big help

Ah, but if you ended up on the other side of the galaxy it's a pretty safe bet you won't be able to see any of those. On the other side of the galaxy there is a second galaxy that is being aborbed into the Milky Way. That could obsruct the view.

(I don't know that for sure, just thinking about the density of the stars that would be there)