Hindsight: Helpful Rules for Investing

HINDSIGHT: HELPFUL RULES FOR INVESTING

by Taylor Moffitt of Halydean

A common quote of money managers in the financial markets is that “hindsight is worthless.” Anyone who has been investing for any worthwhile period of time will inevitably accumulate several regretful investment decisions. Among those, a few have yielded some insights that may be worth repeating. Some of these insights from hindsight may have worth to the readers.

No penny stocks. Never buy penny stocks. Looking for a good investment among penny stocks is like looking for a good wife in the red light district: It is possible, but the odds are unfavorable. Penny stocks are loaded with companies that are poorly funded and not good at reporting their financial positions. The worst is this: If the company the investor buys is targeted by the SEC for fraud et cetera, the investor can be dragged into the mire as well. Avoid penny stocks and all stocks on the OTC Markets at all costs.

No day trading. Study after study has shown that day traders are statistically at a disadvantage. It is statistically akin to investing at a casino table. The more the day trader trades, the higher the probability that the trader will lose money. There is no research in the academic literature that indicates that any day trading practices can be consistently possible.

No emotion. Emotional investing has no rationality, and can only cloud judgement. Investment decisions should be made based upon quantifiable data alone. Fear and excitement are highly correlated to irrationality.

No faith investments. God should not be reduced to being a fortune teller for personal gain. Fortune tellers are fake. “Stepping out in faith” when it comes to an investment is not spirituality. It is naive. While there are many examples of individuals getting very rich in the Bible, there are no examples of God giving anyone investment advice. In the Bible, wealth is either attributed to luck (Ecclesiastes), the natural side effect of wisdom in action (Proverbs), or the favor of God that happens without explanation (Job). Investing in a company because they are “eco friendly” or because they are “Christian” or because they are “Culturally enlightened” is akin to selecting your heart surgeon based upon their religion or good recycling habits.

No black boxes. No investor should ever invest in something that he or she does not understand. If the words “trading platform” is used to describe the mysterious manner of how the rich keep getting richer, the investor should run the other way. This rule may throw out a few proverbial babies with the bath water, but in a market filled with tens of thousands of investment opportunities, it is statistically advantageous to just avoid the whole mess of things one does not understand.

No time bombs. Investments that have approaching expiration dates should be avoided at all costs. While it is possible to prove that some investment positions have a statistical advantage and high fundamental probability of price appreciation, no investor can predict the time frame. Sometimes investments take longer than expected. One should expect delays, and then one will never be disappointed.

No overweighting. A diversified portfolio is wise. No one investment position should ever be more than 10% of a portfolio, and only under the rarest instances should an investment position be more than 5% of a portfolio. If a position grows to be overweighted, that is good news, but investors should no go out of their way to add any new position to their portfolio by adding too much weight to it. This is abandoning the diversification plan. Proper weighting should include industries too. For example, a bank that had 10,000 different mortgage positions in 2008, but was all invested in residential housing, was still precariously overweighted and at risk. Proper diversification also includes: diversifying into various industries that may complement each other, diversifying into various nations and economies that may diversely complement each other, diversifying into various opposing currencies, and diversifying into various types of different industries. If a portfolio has 30% of its positions in industrial manufacturing companies, even with thousands of different stocks, the portfolio is overweighted. Startups should never be overweighted in a portfolio either.

Remember cash flow. Investors should work, and maintain their financial security in terms of cash flow. This may mean not quitting one’s “day job” until one has enough cash flow from investments. Many investors lose sight of the difference between gains in net worth versus gains in cash flow. Investment positions that provide cash flow must be included in any portfolio that has balanced diversification.

No pioneering. Investors should follow experts. Floyd Butterfield is the man who invented the modern ethanol manufacturing industry as we know it today. His model of the “24/7” operational distillation using a boiler and multiple fermentation tanks is used today the world over. Floyd Butterfield once personally told the author, “The pioneers get shot with arrows, but the settlers take the land.” Pioneering investments are statistically very risky. The garbage can of Wall Street is littered with better mouse traps and pioneers who innovated wonderful new things. Pioneering is for venture capital investors who have their own rules of investing. Leave pioneer investing to the venture capitalists.

No industry overturns. If a new company’s success will mean the death of an entire industry, do not expect that industry to go down without a fight. Sometimes even fantastic companies can become “road kill” as larger, more established companies systematically destroy them because they are viewed as a threat.

Expect inflation. Any study of history shows that democracy tends to vote in favor of lower taxes and/or more government spending. The political solution to this problem is always for the government to go into debt. The current governments driving our global economy are all shining examples of this principle in action. Even a cursory analysis of http://www.usdebtclock.org shows that in order for such massive debts to be serviced, the government will be forced to expand the monetary supply (create inflation). This means that investing in a 30 year bond yielding 3% interest is as naive as it is optimistic. Owning an “I owe you” from any government these days is perhaps a “faith investment” (see above). A better move would be to invest in businesses and industries that can profit from inflation.

 

 

 

 

Ancient Athens, Democracy, and All That

Ancient Greece, Democracy, and All That

By Taylor Moffitt of Halydean

Ancient Athens is the venerable cradle of democracy, the symbol of modern government, and the icon of enlightened world order. Aside from being the birthplace of our democratic system of government by the people and for the people, ancient Athens was also the birthplace of Greek philosophy, a form of rhetoric that anyone with a PhD will tell you is the bees knees.

In other words, democracy and philosophy are as to the ancient Greeks as baseball and apple pie are to the Americans.

Socrates was known as being the founding father of Greek philosophy. Socrates gave his thoughts of democracy in Book VI of The Republic by Plato as follows: “If you were traveling on a long journey across the ocean in a great large rented ship with a group of tourists, you would need to have somebody in charge of the maps, navigation, how to run the ship and so forth. Who should get to decide the person who is in charge of the large ship and all of its important decision making? The tourists and passengers, or people who are experts in sea faring and maritime veterans?” The man to whom he was speaking wisely answered that certainly experts in sea faring and maritime veterans should make that decision. Socrates then asked, “If this is what you say, why then do you think that any citizen of Athens should be allowed to vote?

Socrates was making the point that voting in an election is an exercise in subject matter mastery, and that letting all citizens vote is as irresponsible and feckless as allowing a group of tourists to vote for their own ship captain. If you have not gathered the point yet, Socrates did not like democracy at all.

Socrates went to his grave hating democracy. In an ironic representation of the intelligence of democracy, Socrates was put on trial for (sic) corrupting the youths of Athens with his now famous Greek rhetoric that has become the backbone of Western logic and science. In this witch hunt, the fate of Socrates was determined, rather iconically, by a popular vote of 100 Athenians. He lost by a vote of two and was sentenced to death by a large group of mostly ignoramus simpletons.

If a group of children were allowed to vote for their developmental care regimen, one scholar might prescribe a regular bedtime, proper diet, exercise, certain routines, limits on video games, and plenty of study. Another might suggest no bedtimes, lots of candy and treats, no mandatory exercise, no limits on video games, and reduced study times. The children would almost certainly always vote for the developmental care regimen that offers them the most instant gratification, even to their detriment.

One need not compose a list of outstanding stupid decisions made by large groups of people voting for what they want. There are ample examples throughout history of elected leaders who acted irresponsibly fawning to the masses by giving people what they wanted rather than what was best for them.

Niall Fergusson is a Scottish historian who formerly taught at Harvard and has published a lot of work on economic history. Fergusson identified a pattern in democratic nations that seem to run their course through a cycle of democracy which includes a growth phase, several other steps involving inflation and currency debasement, and then the inevitable implosion as the nation votes so much free stuff for itself that it eventually faces economic collapse. The correlation to the U.S. is staggering and very sobering.

What, then, is the answer to the best form of government? Socrates taught that the only people who should be allowed to vote are those who have thought about the subjects rationally and deeply. The founding fathers of the US believed that only land-owning males should be allowed to vote, most of whom were wealthy and educated. When people ask me personally, I often like to state that I am Neither a Republican nor a Democrat, but a feudalist. Yep, bring back feudal dictatorship. Try it folks, just vote me in with irrevocable power for a while and give it a try. I’ll be great! The U.S. eventually settled on a representative democracy, which operates on the theory that the masses are too stupid to govern themselves, so elected representatives can vote on their behalf. An example of this is the electoral college that officially votes for the president. Actually, two members of the electoral college defected and did not vote for The Donald, and five abandoned Hillary. In total throughout the history of the U.S., the electoral college has voted contrary to the wishes of its constituents 157 times, including one who was too drunk to properly write out the name of the candidate he wanted. In a representative democracy, the representatives fawn to special interest groups and always vote themselves more salaries and benefits, contrary to what their constituents would want. So that may not be the best option either. The two-party system as a whole even has its flaws, offering one platform or the other, resulting in gridlock, politicians opposing even great ideas that come from the opposing party, and “win-lose” decision making. This is about as effective as trying to get to your destination with someone occasionally throwing your car in reverse.

As underwhelming as all of the above alternatives to democracy are, the advance of technology may afford some better alternatives. As long as artificial intelligence does not become evil and try to extinguish humanity, an artificial intelligence program (“A.I.”) can use algorithms and massive amounts of data gathered about individuals to determine their needs and wants, and then the A.I. can be allowed to vote on behalf of the individual, for what is in the best interest of that individual. Given the votes, another A.I. can be free to govern according to the percentage of votes. Rather than “win-lose”, the A.I. can be free to develop a happy medium in cases where that makes sense. Rather than succumb to pleas for “more taxes” or “lower taxes,” Such an A.I. can be free to objectively calculate the optimum taxation matrix for maximum economic prosperity within the system.

Perhaps Socrates would have struggled to understand algorithms, but maybe he would have been the biggest advocate of just such a new system. So, some day when people finally start to talk about a real possibility of cybernetic democracy, we have the ancient Greeks to thank?

Giving Credit to God?

Giving Credit to God?

by Taylor Moffitt of Halydean

Over the last thousand years, wanting to give credit to God, theologians of the past have made the mistake of attributing things which we do not understand to the divine intervention of God.

When Isaac Newton asked why does the moon orbit the earth, he was not satisfied with the pat answer that most people were telling him: “God makes it orbit the earth.” Effectively, this reduced God to only being necessary to explain the things that we did not understand, as if God is reduced to a sort of hocus pocus recluse.

Instead, Newton did research. Newton found what we now all know are the Newtonian laws of physics. The moon orbits the earth because of inertia and gravity. Newton believed that it was God who established the laws of nature. Sir Isaac’s opinion about science and God can be summed up by his quote, “He who thinks half-heartedly will not believe in God; but he who really thinks has to believe in God.”

So, rather than attempting to credit God in a superstitious manner and only for the things which we do not understand, we should give God credit for his revelation in the complexity of all of the things which we have finally come to understand.

The laws of physics, relativity, and of quantum physics, and of all of the mysteries of the unknown quantum fluctuations which we do not yet understand might all be summed up as “the laws of nature.” The laws of nature give us a better understanding of how God designed and how God orders his universe.

The laws of nature declare the glory of God.

Is the Trinity Rational?

by Taylor Moffitt of Halydean

This brief paper introduces a theorem which purports that the Trinity is a logically unavoidable conclusion about the God of the Bible

1. God created space time. God is not subject to space-time. Like a computer programmer who exists outside of a video game that he made, all of space-time and our universe is before God, in the palm of his hand. Because space-time is one phenomenon, we see that the concept of omnipresence is only grasping one part of God’s greatness within the confines of space-time.
2. Jesus claimed to be God. He said, “Before Abraham was, I am,” and they were so offended at his use of the holy and unspeakable name of God that they picked up rocks to stone him to death right on the spot.
3. The writers of the New Testament claimed Jesus was God. John starts his famous letter off thusly, “Ἐν ἀρχῇ ἦν ὁ λόγος, καὶ ὁ λόγος ἦν πρὸς τὸν θεόν, καὶ θεὸς ἦν ὁ λόγος.” He explains by saying that ὁ λόγος is Jesus, so we can translate it as follows, substituting “Jesus” for “ὁ λόγος”: “In the beginning was Jesus, and Jesus was with God, and God was Jesus.” That is God the Son.
4. If God exists outside of time-space, and enters into time-space as a finite man, he does not simply cease to exist outside of time-space. He is still there. That is God the Father. Therein is the first duality of God.
5. If Jesus ascended into heaven in his physical body, there still exists a duality aspect to God: Infinite God turned himself into a finite man. So when he prayed, it wasn’t that he was just mumbling to himself as you or I would, but as a human who is the incarnation of God talking to the infinite God the Father. He is both infinite and finite at the same.
6. If I die, my spirit will leave my body and that’s the end of my lifespan. My spirit is the real me that lives inside my body. Jesus, being God, is not limited by such things. His own Spirit, being the real Jesus living inside his body, can leave while he is still alive and indwell multitudes of his followers at once (called the Spirit of God and also the Spirit of Jesus in the Bible).
7. This aspect of God indwelling us does not mean that God ceases to exist outside of infinity, or that he ceases to exist as God the Son, and now our count of God’s manifestations is up to three with God the Holy Spirit.
8. Therefore the tri-unity commonly referred to as the Trinity is a logically necessary conclusion of the teachings of the Bible.

He is still one individual, its just that the infinity is a little tough to comprehend. Its like trying to envision a four-dimensional shape in our three-dimensional world.

 

Figure 1. A four-dimensional Clifford-Torus shape

How to Value Your Own Worth

How much is a person worth? A balance sheet is no way to measure a person’s worth. Some of the most heinous people in the world were very wealthy, yet they were worthless human beings.

People have intrinsic value, as humans. People have historic value which is the sum of their contributions to humanity, as only God can know. People also have potential value.

In 2008 my real estate crashed, as did my small airplane. I was flying a Piper Cub reproduction when the motor seized turning downwind in the flight pattern. It spiraled downward, going into a tailspin. I turned into the spin and pushed the nose of the plane straight down to get as much airspeed as possible. Right before hitting the ground, I pulled up, but did not have enough airspeed to fly. The plane crashed into the ground. I remember hearing the wheels break off, and seeing the tail of the plane fold across in front of the windscreen as the aircraft rolled into a ball of wreckage. I popped out unscathed. God saved my life (more than once) thus assigning a value to it. Now it is my responsibility to spend this currency wisely.

God is not subject to time or space. You can’t say, “where is God?” because he is not subject to the illusion of space, and all of space is before him. Space is a finite construct. To ask “where is God?” is like asking where in the computer program is the programmer who wrote it. The whole program is before the programmer, and the programmer is not subject to the code he as written.

Time and space are one in the same. Physicists now call them time-space. In the same way you cannot say, “when did God begin?” because he is not subject to time, and all of time is before him. All of space-time is a finite construct within the greater reality of God’s spiritual dimension, just as all of a computer program is a small construct within the greater universe of the computer programmer who wrote it.

God is infinitely powerful, and of infinite worth. Half of infinity is infinity. One-millionth of infinity is still an infinite number. One-trillionth of infinite value is still an infinite value. Because the infinite God became a man and died to purchase humanity, paying the price of infinite value, what then is the value of humanity? What then is the value of one human?

Don’t get your sense of self-worth from your good deeds, but in the fact of who you were created to be, who God made you to be, and that He died for you, and would have died for you if you were the only person in the world.

Causes of Human Misjudgment

Causes of Human Misjudgment

By Taylor Moffitt of Halydean

The following list and description of the causes of human misjudgment was inspired by the work of Charlie Munger, whom some of you may know as an executive at Berkshire Hathaway, also known as Warren Buffett’s right-hand man. Munger has worked to build many of these over the years and he capitalizes upon the investment misjudgments and irrationality of others. This list may be helpful to any of us, in helping us to understand the misjudgments of others and help prevent misjudgments and irrationality in our own lives.

 

Simple denial. Someone refuses to acknowledge the truth because they simply can’t accept it. This is often the case of parents who can’t accept that their wonderful daughter or son has done something inappropriate, is deceased, etc. The tale of the ostrich who stuck its head in the sand applies here. 

Figure 1. Caricaturization of denial

Conflicts of interest. A manager or agent who is supposed to be acting on behalf of someone may have compensation that is self-serving to influence decisions to go towards a different direction. For example, a politician who is bribed. 

Human need for consistency. Once someone is on record taking a certain stance on a given subject, even if they are wrong, they feel the need for consistency and will be biased towards consistency. When a person argues something, they are not only pounding it into the heads of their listeners, but they are pounding it into their own head. This includes stereotyping, dogmatic beliefs, and more. For example a mother who told her son not to marry a certain individual will feel the psychological need for consistency to subconsciously encourage her son to get out of the marriage at a moment of decision, contributing towards a self-fulfilling prophecy. Another example is politics. A person with any political affiliation will tend to want to support the politics of their party, even if it is a misjudgment they would have otherwise been able to observe if the decision was not politicized. 

Misconstruing past correlation to present causation. These are psychological anchors, just like Pavlov showed us with his dogs. Humans are quick to assume that correlation means causation. A person may get sick with a virus that has been growing in them for days, but only notice feeling sick shortly after eating at a new restaurant. The person may quickly assume it was food poisoning. Likewise, someone with an abusive ex-boyfriend who gets a new boyfriend that looks similar may be misjudged by Pavlovian association. At one point in the past, some scientists used to believe that rotting meat causes flies to be born until it was proven that fly eggs from other flies cause flies to be born.

Reciprocation tendency. Humans have a tendency to reciprocate whether it makes any sense to do so or not. This is being a patsy in some cases, such as a person who feels obligated to give a donation after receiving a manipulative gift from the fundraiser. Reciprocation tendency also influences someone with a perceived (but unreal) wrong to respond as an aggressor. For example a caring but poor father who cannot afford his child support payment and after liquidating everything he owns in an effort to keep up, requests to have his payment lowered only to find that the mother has reciprocated by requesting that the payment should be increased even higher. 

Man with a hammer syndrome. There is a saying that to a man with a hammer, everything looks like a nail. This allows individuals to be biased against other individuals, situations, et cetera. For example, a parent whose child was a victim of a crime may misjudge anyone that their child does not like, such as an ex-friend, as a perpetrator of a crime against their child and go into protection mode, misjudging the situation. A CEO who made money by coming into a company and doing massive lay-offs may think that is the solution to profitability in every successive company. 

Figure 2. Caricaturization of Man with a hammer syndrome

Conclusions of others. There was once a famous murder where a woman was killed in a city with dozens of witnesses watching, and none of them did anything. People were concluding that because nobody around them was doing anything, it was OK for them to do nothing also. For example, a person engaged in wrongful behavior against another person may continue to do so, feeling encouraged by the approval from their under-informed peers. 

Contrast-caused subjectivity distortion. If a person puts one hand in cold water and the other hand in hot water, then removes them and puts both hands in lukewarm water, one hand will feel cold while the other feels hot. A Realtor trick is to show a customer two ugly and overpriced houses, then present the one they wish to sell to capitalize on this misjudgment.

Over-influence by authority. In the Milgram experiment, individuals were instructed by an authority figure who told them their experiment was to help people with science, and as they believed they were shocking a real human to death, they obeyed because they were told, “the experiment must continue.” If a mother tells her children that it is normal for them never to be isolated from their father, or if a North Korean dictator tells his people that it is normal for them to be isolated from the rest of the world, they will misjudge reality due to the edict coming from an authority figure. 

Deprival super-reaction syndrome. Some dogs are always gentle, except if they have some food and may only bite if someone tries to take food away from them. The fear of loss can promote an intense reaction of misjudgment. Once a person believes they are entitled to something, they feel a deprival super-reaction if they are told they are not entitled to it, even if it is not theirs. 

Figure 3. Caricaturization of deprival super-reaction syndrome

Bias from envy/jealousy. This was important enough to make it into the 10 commandments. Humans will be prone to bias and upset at seeing others do or better than them or have better things. Munger stated that Warren Buffet often says, “Its not greed that drives the world, but envy.” 

Bias from gambling choice / need for consistency. Once a person has chosen a particular gamble (stock, lottery number), they are biased towards that choice they have endorsed. Seeing two cherries on a slot machine encourages them to believe that when the third came up different, that they are getting close to a win. 

Disliking / liking distortion. For example, a person we dislike must be wrong, and someone we like must be right. A daughter or son’s explanation of a situation (or a client’s explanation) must be right, but the person we do not like must be wrong. A clean, likable, and attractive salesperson could be offering a terrible solution, but yet will be influential. Likewise, an unpleasant salesperson could have a fantastic product, but people will be biased against that person’s product. 

Stress induced mental changes.People who are stressed frequently misjudge things and become irrational in many different situations. Stockholm syndrome happens when an individual who has been kidnapped begins to feel a loyalty to protect their kidnapper. When pressure is applied to a finance professional that manager is influenced to take greater risks than she or he should in order to succeed. An example of this is the broke gambler in a casino who “invests” one last time, double or nothing in an effort to fix everything.

Simple lack of information. This is frequently the case for an attorney whose client is in the wrong, but the client in the wrong selectively informs their counsel of what they want them to hear. The earnest and highly-skilled attorney then goes on to inadvertently cause harm by convincing a judge to award favorably to the person in the wrong. 

Bias from dependency. We have all heard of the effects of chemical dependency bias, where drug addiction can cause misjudgments. People can also be dependent on control, security, ego, et cetera. A narcissist will misjudge surroundings based on dependency for egocentrism, and so forth. An individual with a highly controlling mother, who was also controlled into sex as a child by someone else, and later date-raped in college, may develop a control over-dependency. Anyone who is perceived as a threat to take away their control can be the recipient of all sorts of misjudgment. Frequently, individuals who are dependent on something do not make the association with their current pathology. 

Figure 4. Caricaturization of bias from dependency

Other limitations of awareness. If someone is not consciously aware of the whole story, they can misjudge a situation. An individual with autism cannot read non-verbals, and is frequently unable to understand others who “clearly told him” something that any neurotypical person would understand, such as information from facial expressions. Other limitations of awareness may summarize many of the above situations, and is a catch-all for others that were missed, as well as numerous other types of mental and psychological blocks and psychological unawareness of certain information in general such as a stroke, Alzheimers, or other neurological disorder. 

Illustrations by Tiny, 2017

Kohelet

Kohelet

By T. M. Halydean

     The book of Ecclesiastes, called Kohelet (קֹהֶלֶת‬) in the Hebrew Tanakh, is part of the writings that teach that we all have a God-shaped hole in our hearts. Efforts to seek fulfillment with things such as money, power, knowledge, relationships, partying, and everything else in life are all meaningless, nothing more than a whisp of smoke, temporary and incapable of providing fulfillment for the God-shaped hole in our hearts. Solomon concludes the book by stating that we should invest our pursuits in something meaningful and worthwhile: remembering our creator while we are young.

Toward the very end of the book, there is a little instruction on how to live life. I think many people have heard that we are to remember our creator in the days of our youth, but this little mandate from Chapter 9 on how to live life is one I have overlooked. I believe the Message Translation brings it to life in a more significant way. Interpret it in the context of being the preliminary admonishment to telling us to remember our creator in the days our youth, which is the point of the whole book.

But the dead know nothing and get nothing. They’re a minus that no one remembers. Their loves, their hates, yes, even their dreams, are long gone. There’s not a trace of them left in the affairs of this earth.

Seize life! Eat bread with gusto,

Drink wine with a robust heart.

Oh yes– God takes pleasure in your pleasure!

Dress festively every morning.

Don’t skimp on colors and scarves.

Relish life with the spouse you love

Each and every day of your precarious life.

Each day is God’s gift. It’s all you get in exchange

For the hard work of staying alive.

Make the most of each one!

Whatever turns up, grab it and do it. And heartily!

This is your last and only chance at it,

For there’s neither work to do nor thoughts to think

In the company of the dead, where you’re most certainly headed.

Relative Velocity

I was doing some thought experiments and concluded the following: The speed of a moving object can never be absolute. It changes depending on who is looking at it, and what is their own relative reference for gauging speed, and their own velocity. But since we cannot gauge any velocity except through the movement of an external body, the whole of speed is just as much of an illusion as is time/space.

Galilean Relativity

By Taylor Moffitt of Halydean

The only way to gauge movement is through the movement of an external body. If we are in the darkness of space, alone, we have no external reference by which we may determine any movement. On earth, our usual reference is the ground under our feet, which is actually rotating about the earth’s axis at about 1,000 miles per hour, going through a procession on its axis, and orbiting the sun at about 67,000 miles per hour in an imperfect ellipse. Our solar system is at the same time traveling at about 514,000 miles per hour around the Milky Way galaxy, while it also is moving towards M31 (the Andromeda galaxy) at about 250,000 miles per hour. The thought of anything in our world being motionless is an illusion created by the fact that everything we see is moving with us, making us unable to gauge any of this movement. We don’t really even know if our galaxy is moving or if M31 is moving towards us, other than making an estimate of this relative to the movement of other galaxies.

Traveling at Near Light Speed

By Taylor Moffitt of Halydean

Muons were discovered by Anderson & Neddermeyer in 1936. They are created when particles from space crash into the atmosphere, for about 2 millionths of a second. They travel at 99% of the speed of light. Here on earth, from our perspective, they should be able to travel about .66km. However, research has shown that due to Einstein’s theory of special relativity, the particles do not age according to time from our perspective, but from their own perspective of time, which is slowed down by their great speed. This allows them to travel for about .66 km, or 32 km, depending no your perspective. One of these measurements is 48.48 times faster than the other, relatively speaking.

I thought that was pretty interesting because I figure it means that to travel 48.48 light years at 99% of the speed of light, one will need only to wait 1 year… and will only need enough fuel and supplies to travel for one year. Alpha Centauri is our nearest star system at 4.22 light years away. Since there are 365.259636 days in a year, if we had a warp-drive spaceship capable of traveling at 99% of the speed of light for the entire trip, we would need to pack enough meals and oxygen et cetera for only about 31 days and 10 hours.