So How Are We Going To Beat The Limitations of Relativity For Space Travel? Warp drive? Jump Gates to another "space"? Ideas Image included for review Moi Across an immense, unguarded, ethereal border, Canadians, cool and unsympathetic, regard our America with envious eyes and slowly and surely draw their plans against us.
Not, "how," but, "Hau" - Lene Vestergaard Hau, that is. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slow_light "Impossible," a few years ago. Manipulate one dimension, and perhaps you can conquer the rest. Your mileage - and velocity - may vary. .
Humans are not capable We can still rule nearby planets but i think it’s silly to think we can do much more You can’t beat physics and the energy to warp the fabric of Space is billions of times the earth output
For the foreseeable future we are not going to 'beat' relativity. If (and its a huge if) there is undiscovered physics that let you travel faster than light there is still a whole raft of engineering and medical issues to be overcome before 'manned' flight out of the solar system is possible. For a start we haven't even mastered the art of lifting larges masses at economic rates off the Earths surface yet. Then you have the task of assembling large structures in space to support your interstellar missions - habitats, assembly yards, mining operations etc. That task alone is enormously expensive and you haven't even built one star ship yet. We don't have the power systems (like fusion etc) working on Earth let alone in zero G. And every possible method of FTL travel considered to date requires enormous amounts of power. As a species we can't cope with prolonged exposure to radiation or zero g which means we would need shielded, rotating habitats just while building the ships. We don't have any working space based, self contained life support systems designed for long duration missions. We don't have any proven spaced bases hydroponic systems for food, or zero/minimal loss waste recycling systems. Our astronauts are entirely reliant of supplies they take with them. In short even is some passing friendly alien handed us a working FTL drive and explained how to operate it tomorrow we wouldn't be able to build a working spaceship to put it in for a century if not longer. We simply have too much to learn about the problems of living and working in space long term. A working FTL ship is entirely dependent upon us solving a myriad of other scientific, medical and engineering hurdles first. We have to walk before we can run (even if we do fave FTL sneakers).
Good point. I would think a discovery and application of such a discovery would be 5K - 20K years off. If it's even possible which I doubt it is. So many other things need to be discovered and perfected before such travel could be attempted.
https://www.space.com/17628-warp-drive-possible-interstellar-spaceflight.html old article, maybe it's been debunked by now.
This requires the energy output of giant stars and black holes We can’t even figure out batteries that are effective for solar energy This may always be unattainable
Hollywood and the real, Captain Kirk got us thinking about cellphones. Don't let Relativity infect your thinking. There is a Physics beyond as Relativity was beyond Newtonian.
As far as we are aware you can't 'hit' anything while traveling FTL because you would not be traveling in normal space. Traveling FTL is a misnomer. You might be able to 'bend' Einsteins rules by warping space in such a fashion that you travel from point (A) to point (B) without traversing the 'normal' space/distance in between but you cannot exceed the speed of light and remain in our normal frame of reference/space time. In effect you have to (however briefly) leave the universe as we know it. As we understand physics the speed of light is invariable (in a vacuum). So you can approach the speed of light (aprox 300,000 kps) but never reach it or exceed it. In other words no-one gets to travel at 300,001 kps or above. However I would be more worried about what happens when you accelerate to speeds that approach an appreciable percentage of the speed of light. Since the kinetic energy of any given object equals half its mass (m) times the square of its velocity (v): E = ½mv2 every time you double the speed of an object with a given mass you quadruple its kinetic energy. So at speeds equaling a significant % of the speed of light (say 10%) and above even a grain of sand becomes a significant threat to your space ship. (Yet another hurdle in the way of traveling to the stars.)
Probably a variation on the idea of warp drive where sphere of energy is generated around a starship that alters space in such a way that the ship travels effectively at faster than light speeds (though it doesn't traveling locally at faster than light speeds) Lots of questions involving power requirements, the creation of negative matter/energy, plus several we've probably never even thought of. But I think they are solvable. Certainly within a few hundred years more or less.
Yes - I just didn't want to say all that. Thanks for doing so!! Also, I'm not one to talk about other dimensions. But, if there ARE other dimensions I wouldn't bet that they are empty. After all, the two dimensional objects in a two dimensional world can have a presence in a three dimensional world. A square could be present due to a cube in a higher dimension. A planetoid in three dimensions could have a higher dimensional presence in a higher dimension. Back to the main point - once we figure out how to travel "really fast" (whatever that is) there is a speed related routing or shielding problem.
Not about traveling really fast. It is about "warping space" shrinking the space toward a destination while filling and expanding space behind. In a sense you aren't traveling, space is - sort of. Or outside of space thingies like "sub space" and the Babylon 5 system of jump gates if a ship doesn't carry their own. Traveling fast is for Newtonian and Relativity constrained thinkers.
Science fiction is great fun! I don't believe "warping space" will move an object out of the way of your razzle dazzle space ship. I think you'll still need the force shield of starship Enterprise and the route calculator of the Millenium Falcon. And, I don't believe our current power sources will be sufficient for all that warping and shielding and whatnot. Also - there is physics, of course.
@Dayton3 Please communicate to @WillReadmore - - who doesn't Cellphones are a Star Trek spin off! "Science Fiction is great fun . . " And Captain Kirk is !
No multi-generation colony ships using the Orion Projects propulsion system its very much to the point we could use this maybe in 100 years we could send such a ship out with humans to colonize nearby star systems. If it reaches 0.2 the speed of light it reach a nearest star system with likely candidate planets in a couple decades.
I've read in several places that for practical reasons the maximum slower than light speed is probably around 70% of the speed of light. Assuming that is a cruising velocity and allowing at least one year for acceleration and one year for deacceleration then that puts the closest star within about 7 years of Earth. And star further out longer than that which most of you can probably figure out with simple back of the book math. While round trips to planets around other stars of say 20-30 years sounds like extremely long assuming human lifespans continue to grow it isn't as big a deal as people think. You would probably have starships that transported colonists nearly continually with the crews living aboard a starship for upwards of 100 years or more, making several round trips to other solar systems. From the time they joined the starship corps (whatever you want to call it) until they retired.
@tkolter @Dayton3 Your Imaginations are So Limited By YOUR Perception of Truth. Think! Beyond Relativity as Einstein did Newton Or Not
No I'm a realist the first step is colonize our system and build space cities which is cheap really over say colonizing Mars then move or species to other stars to increase our species survival these largely one way trips for brave humans. Someday we might get lucky and go past light speed but its not likely right now or in the foreseeable future. But seeding several star systems should be a human races goal our descendants can then expand someday out more and on and on..
