princehal9000 replied your post oh my god though can we talk about what a space compass would LOOK LIKE?
you could relate it from the center point away from which the universe is expanding (I feel like we even might *know* that already?) and then probably a reference points. but it would be triangulation anyway.
mcbitchtits replied your post oh my god though can we talk about what a space compass would LOOK LIKE?
well i mean I guess directions would depend on what youre orienting to. I.E. compasses conventionally went by magnetic poles existence. also idk if youd need extra dimensions, since its orientation and not rate of travel
I DID SOME RESEARCH AND I'M NOT SURE HOW MANY QUESTIONS IT ANSWERS BUT HERE!
oh man tho we don't know that there IS actually a center of the universe, apparently, here's a page that talks about it but it's from 1997 so it's probably super outdated by now--the big bang explosion section of it makes sense though. (saying that the big bang explosion has an epicenter is apparently kind of like saying 'i've frequently not been on boats' when really 'what you've been is not on boats'? that's how i explained it to myself anyway.)
that thing at the end tho, the cosmological principle, apparently that's also on shaky ground at the moment. they found a couple of really enormous structures that poke holes in the 'homogenous' thing and were thought to be cosmologically impossible (what a great phrase!). like. a group of 73 quasars that's 4 billion light-years across.
i don't think it's possible to comprehend how enormous that is.
there is an international celestial reference system that uses the barycenter of the solar system as its reference point! but oh man i just thought of this: the solar system is also moving through space. so any compass would have to take that into account and also the rate at which other celestial bodies are moving through space, WHAT a complicated piece of equipment. (the solar system is hurtling through space at a rate of something like 2.7 million (?) miles per hour--which is ah. well. negligable when you're talking in terms of light-years, which are something like six trillion miles? god.)
bonus explanation of black holes just because. has lots of really lovely geometry in it.
and then i tried to learn about four-dimensional space and it just was enormously unsuccessful because that shit is difficult.
SPACE CARTOGRAPHY THOUGH! i bet if you're going for precise interstellar navigation u can't draw space cartography. it has to be all equations because everything is moving all the time