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.
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.
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.
"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."
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.
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.
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.
I fear you have lived up to your handle and missed the point? Your last sentence is exactly what he was pointing out.
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."
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...