Word: interstellar
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There were other, more remarkable changes in the sky. At the tremendous velocities necessary for interstellar travel, there were noticeable Doppler shifts in the frequencies of light emitted from the stars. As the spacecraft approached stars at high velocity, their light appeared to be shifted toward the blue, or higher frequency end of the spectrum. Moving rapidly away from other stars caused their light to appear more red. Stars viewed through the front window of the spacecraft generally became more blue, those through the rear window more red, as the spacecraft velocity increased...
...saucer advocates who suggest that extraterrestrial beings accidentally discovered the earth's civilization during random exploration of the universe, Sagan has an answer: "If each of a million advanced technical civilizations in our galaxy launched at random an interstellar spacecraft each year, our solar system would, on the average, be visited only once every 100,000 years...
...prehistoric man, everything he saw probably seemed alive; death was the unthinkable anomaly. The situation is reversed in a scientifically oriented world; amid dead matter, life seems an unaccountable, brief flash in the interstellar dark. Not that this has destroyed the power of faith to confront death. Beyond the doubts of its own "demythologers," and on a plane of thought beyond either denial or confirmation by science, Christianity still offers the hope of eternal life. Theologians are debating whether this means immortality in the sense of the survival of the soul, or resurrection, in the sense of a new creation...
...Profiles of the Future, Arthur C. Clarke, the noted British science popularizer, has carefully avoided timidity. Looking a mere fifty years ahead, Clark foresees immortality, artificial life, interstellar probes and meetings with extra-terrestrial intelligence. "Impossible" is a rare word in his book...
...communication, even between planets, will be difficult. There will be a three minute transit time for messages from Mars to the Earth; clearly a conversation in the earthly sense is impossible. Even between the earth and nearby moon, there will be a two and a half-second delay. At interstellar distances, communications will require years to reach their destinations. Travel will be infinitely slower, and anyone who sets out to visit a star cannot expect his children, or probably his children's children, to live to see the end of the journey. Clearly an empire is out of the question...