Comment by gku 21 hours ago
If you find this impressive, take a look at the 1.33 billion stars TSP solution provided by the same authors.
- Gaia DR2 (1,331,906,450 Stars): https://www.math.uwaterloo.ca/tsp/star/gaia2.html
> "The tour is at most 1.0038 times the length of a shortest-possible route."
I think your astronomy skills are correct, but if we have to worry about actual travel then you would also have to consider things like fuel capacity, refuel opportunities, the fact that you probably don't want to actually fly through a star but around it, etc.
I think it's still valid to have a distinction between travel logistics and having a route that's at least theoretically possible. I suppose what they've calculated would work with a star gate like system, but then I'm not sure what the point of having minimal distance would be.
This also doesn't handle new bars being opened and closed as you travel. Not to mention bouncers having bad days so you will have to revisit the bar.
That's not true. The tour is 16.2 billion light years long, so even at the speed of light, it would take more than the current age of the universe to travel. Stars will move a lot over that period of time.
But that presumably doesn't handle the relative motion of the stars, which makes the problem even trickier, since the distances will change as you travel, no? Or is my astronomy off base here?