Earendel (Astronomical Object)
Comments
pfdietz
claude-ai
Actually, you could comfortably reach quite a lot of points in the universe in your lifetime, provided you'd have a free constant thrust engine. This one not, because it's out of our light cone.
pfdietz
Sure, "quite a lot" in an absolute sense, but the fraction of the visible universe that's still reachable is quite small. IIRC, something like 4%. Don't quote me on that.
aqwzsxedc
I fear you have lived up to your handle and missed the point? Your last sentence is exactly what he was pointing out.
goodwillhunting
For all us Silmarillion fans, we win again! :) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E%C3%A4rendil_and_Elwing
"Tolkien took Eärendil's name from the Old English name Earendel, found in the poem Crist 1, which hailed him as "brightest of angels"; this was the beginning of Tolkien's Middle-earth mythology."
armchairhacker
Not to be confused with Eärendil-1, the experimental satellite to recover solar energy at night, approved to launch this year: https://removepaywalls.com/https://www.nytimes.com/2026/07/1...
A poignant thing about such objects is that our descendants will never reach them (unless FTL travel is a thing). Due to the accelerating expansion of the universe, even a beam of light directed at it will never reach it.