> >Should you score a copy of the January issue and you wish to give the
> >new editor some feedback on that article on page 57, the address is:
> >skytel@skypub.com
>
> Amara Graps wrote: You can tell *me* what you think too ....
OK. Great article! Something Ive wondered about for years
since I read an Arthur Clarke novel called Songs of Distant Earth:
an interstellar ship needed some kind of shield from the dust
particles {your interstellar-lopers}. They settled on water ice,
since it was available in large quantities. I know how to do the
calculations for how much shield would be eroded as a function
of the mass of the particles and the speed of the ship, but the
part I am missing is the typical expected density of dust, in
mass per unit volume. A wild ass guess on my part would
be about a nanogram per cubic kilometer of space.
Is there a way to calculate an upper bound on the density
of dust between stars? Does the degree of polarization of the
spectrum from a distant star allow some upper bound? Is
there a way to lower bound the problem? spike
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