Earth size planet discovered orbiting Alpha Centauri B

Obviously, developing any new propulsion technologies for space exploration is only a good thing. However, reaching extrasolar systems will not be practical while we are still using chemical-based fuel systems (yes, including nuclear). Believe it or not, I read an article about a theoretically possible "warp drive" that is already being looked into. It works by contracting space in front of the ship, while simultaneously expanding space in the rear. In essence, this utilizes a loophole in relativity to travel faster than the speed of light (up to ~10c, if I remember correctly) by moving space itself instead of moving the ship.

Awesome stuff, unfortunately, it mostly likely will not be applicable until after our lifetime.

If I can find the article again, I'll post it, but I didn't see after just a quick look.

 

Voyager is old technology and it exceeded its planned active mission time many times over. I see no problem designing a craft with a hundred or a thousand year life expectancy. The thing would coast most of the way anyway. Maybe it could be built in two stages, one would be active for the first part of the journey then it would hibernate until it was near the target star system when the 2nd stage would awaken. Nuclear power sources could deliver power for as long as necessary, they two could be build to be active at only specific times. Have faith man! lol ~

reva

 

If a spacecraft breaks down it doesn't just stop.

 

I would of course disagree. Warping spacetime for space (or time) travel is only a theoretical consideration. Even if we could do it apparent faster than light travel would create some hairy paradoxes concerning time and such things. For instance (apparent) faster than light travel would land us or our craft in the past. The current consensus is that to hide the paradox of travel to the past is that the thing or person that did it would ‘land’ in and identical but separate universe save for there would be a starship with an astronaut or a robot in that universes timeline. The worst thing is that it would disappear from our (its home) universe forever, well according to theory anyway. As I said Orion is old technology first began in the 1950s. Its almost as simple as a chemical rocket.

That said I do agree with Questerr somewhat acknowledging that deterioration would be a problem especially with the bombs that would be used to fuel the thing, high level radiation is corrosive and damaging to any type of metals and of course spacecraft systems. However I think that could be fairly easily engineered around. The bad thing is that a life time even at 12% light speed which is hundreds times faster than even the fastest vessel man has produced. Lets see..the speed of light in mph in a vacuum is 670616629 mph, lets round it off to 670000000 mph so a tenth of that is what? 6,700,000 mph? Six million seven hundred thousand miles per hour…fast but plodding slow in terms that deal with megaparsecs and such! Well a kiloparsec would be better for our uses. Anyway still even light speed is depressing if we are waiting on an answer from our robot starship. So I am like you wanting a warp drive. However seeing that spacetime would have to be warped not even an matter anti matter drive would do that very well! Maybe we could create a black hole in a giant solar system super conducting supercollider that we could use to warp time and space. Otherwise we are out of luck unless we become immortal.

reva

 

A warp drive, which the laws of physics don't disallow, wouldn't actually result in FTL travel. You warp space and make the distance smaller.

 

We're not going to be able to escape our solar system until we can make travel via quantum entanglement practical.

 

Um, what?

 

Quantum entanglement is where you link two things together on the quantum level. Whatever happens to one happens to the other at the same time regardless of the distance between the two. It has mostly applications for communication, but it is theoretically possible to turn it into a instantaneous travel system by having a craft entangle two points in space and then remove its current location from the entranglement while maintaining a lock on the other.

 

If they ever do finally confirm an Earth-like world in a star's habitable zone, at least they'll finally have a good place to point the radio telescopes

 

It has no application for communication. The entanglement is broken if you do anything to one of the particles.

 

Having a "box" full of quantumly entangled particles and reading their movements would allow for instantaneous communication.

 

No, the entanglement is broken if you do anything to either particle.

 

Correct. That is why you only mess with specific particles.

 

There would be no time travel or paradox. You are thinking of traditional propulsion which moves an object through space, which is not what a warp drive does. With a warp drive, the object technically doesn't move, but rather, you move the space around it. The outcome is the same (getting to another location in space), but you avoid the pesky limitations of relativity.

 

Hey now. Don't be entangling my quantum!

 

35 years and Voyager is not even technically out of our Solar System, never mind there are no living things aboard which need to be sustained.

Building a self-contained and sustainable biosphere in near space to handle 25-100 travelers might require 50-100 years time.

Then the voyage of how many Earth years; 4-1/2 light years in distance at a speed of 50,000 mph?

And even if we can technically and/or theoretically resolve the design, health, logistics, etc. of the program, there's not enough disposable money on Earth to fund the operation.

In my novice opinion, the only way to expect travel of these distances is to discover new physics/laws which allow space travel near or greater than the speed of light...however this might be achieved. Wouldn't it be a shame if the Universe is full of intelligent life yet unable to ever travel the vast distances to meet and greet? If this is the reality, then we can still achieve meeting and greeting but it will be via whatever forms of voice/data communications are available, and even with this, taking nine Earth years to say 'hello' and have someone else understand how to say 'hello' back is not going to be very interesting...

 

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I said 'apparent light' speed. In other words NASA could warp space (essentially creating a short cut) and put a human on a planet orbiting alpha centauri in say, oh a second that would seem if we could observe the feat in real time (we cant because of the speed of light delay) it would seem that the spacecraft/time-machine and the astronaut/timetravler extra universe sojourner…lol.. went to the star with a velocity that was exponential orders of magnitude times faster than the speed of light. I think you are confusing the speed of the journey through the wormhole or other method of creating a shortcut (through the warp) which could be millimeters or inches. So that is why I said the astronaut may find himself in another universe in another timeline and unable to return to his original universe according to current theory. (although I do not see why the astronaut could not return to his original universe if he followed a prescribed path and apparent velocity! The math would be unimaginable to calculate such a trajectory.

reva

 

To clarify Quantum Entanglement is what Einstein called spooky action at a distance. In other words if we have a quantum virtual particle here on earth in a colliders magnetic ring and ET has its twin in its own magnetic ring a million or a billion light years away anything we do to our particle, ie reverse its spin etc would instantaneously occur to its twin millions of light years away! No delay. If it would work on a macro (large) scale it would present some truly paradoxical situations! Even if it was only a quantum event, it still has fantastic implications for communications across the universe with no delay.

Nice thread on the subject(s)http://math.ucr.edu/home/baez/physics/Relativity/SpeedOfLight/FTL.html

reva

 

I agree with nearly your entire post. However voyager may have exited the building already or will soon! That is beyond exciting to me. I forget what the escape velocity of the solar system is and I sas highly surprised voyager had enough velocity to achieve it! Anyway you may be interested in this;

Humanity escapes the solar system: Voyager 1 signals that it has reached the edge of interstellar space - 11billion miles away Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencet...ed-edge-interstellar-space.html#ixzz2A7kKxYM2
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Agree. However I don’t know if I would do a manned mission with our current technology that would permit around 10% to 15% light speed using Orion type nuclear pulse technology available today. However if I was forced to design a manned mission only two to four would go, and not until some type of hibernation was available. They would sleep most of the way. I do believe we (earthlings lol) could build manned spacecraft that would sustain a couple of people cruising at 12% light speed for their lifetime or two lifetimes today. The nuclear subs that operate deep in inner-space can stay at sea as long as their food and perishables last. And a sub isn’t far from a space craft. Also everything, and I mean every system would have to be redundant X 4 or 5 times, more if possible, a robotic mission could do with far a less redundant requirement burden.

So even though I far prefer manned missions, robotic mission are doable today, are affordable and we could see results in our lifetime. So that is what I would love to see happen. Manned missions would focus on month or week long trips to all the planets using Orion type propulsion. Heck we have a few hundred>thousand years worth of exploring in our solar system.

reva

 

And even if we do not hear ET, we will have a reason to build a star ship eh? If we do hear ET's version of our 1930’s radio shows Dam! We would start building a interstellar craft yesterday!

reva

 

Seems to me with what we know today that receiving a radio signal from a intelligent civilization would be a very very slow process moving forward. First, even the closest planets require 8-1/2 years for round-trip communications and it increases from there. Second, we cannot force the type of technology required to build a 'star ship' today; how can we guess how many decades or centuries it will take to acquire exponential knowledge about space travel? And third, which is the 1000 lb. gorilla, is a complete lack of available funding; even on a global scale everyone is broke or building bombs...

 

Voyager won't leave the Solar System for 10s of thousands of years. NASA is using a different definition to everyone else just so they can brag a little.

The Solar System includes anything that orbits the Sun. This range extends out 2 light years.