Space, the final frontier

 


The idea of travelling at the speed of light is an attractive one for sci-fi writers. The speed of light is an incredible 299,792,458 meters per second. At that speed, you could circle Earth more than seven times in one second, and humans would finally be able to explore outside our solar system. In 1947 humans first surpassed the (much slower) speed of sound, paving the way for the commercial Concorde jet and other supersonic aircraft. So will it ever be possible for us to travel at light speed?

Based on our current understanding of physics and the limits of the natural world, the answer, sadly, is no. According to Albert Einstein’s theory of special relativity, summarized by the famous equation E=mc2, the speed of light (c) is something like a cosmic speed limit that cannot be surpassed. So, light-speed travel and faster-than-light travel are physical impossibilities, especially for anything with mass, such as spacecraft and humans.

https://www.britannica.com/story/will-light-speed-space-travel-ever-be-possible#:~:text=So%2C%20light%2Dspeed%20travel%20and,such%20as%20spacecraft%20and%20humans.


Interstellar travel isn't possible


We need to make Earth work for us, not plan on leaving


But going to other stars is a whole different matter, because the distances involved are tremendously greater, meaning that we need to accelerate a spaceship to relativistic speeds - close to the speed of light - to shorten the trip to take only a few years. The good news is that because of relativity, a trip of a tremendous distance (even across the galaxy) can be shortened to a few years - if you have enough energy and don’t mind that you can never return (because due to time dilation your friends and family back on earth will be long since dead when you return to share your findings). But the bad news is that the amount of energy we are talking about is unfathomably large, even for a very small spaceship.

Consider the very closest star to earth - Proxima Centauri. It is 4.4 light years away, which is about 100,000 times farther away than Mars. To send a spaceship of the size of the SpaceX Starship there in two years would require… wait for it… around 200 years of our current global energy production. In different units, it would require around 1,700 times the energy contained in all the nuclear weapons in existence. And that’s to make one trip to the closest star. Going farther - lets say across our galaxy - would require 8.5 Million years of energy production to fill up the gas tanks.

And if that wasn’t bad enough, the rocket engine needed would be made with technology we presently have no idea how to make. The best idea is a matter-antimatter drive (which to reach Proxima Centauri would require an amount of propellant antimatter close to the mass of the existing chemical engines for the Starship), but we have absolutely no idea how to use energy to efficiently change regular matter into antimatter.

And… the sci-fi idea of having our AIs make the trip for us with frozen embryos and expand civilization to all over the galaxy… that’s not going to happen either. Even if the AIs weighed nearly nothing, the mass of the antimatter propellant would still be huge and the energy requirements similar. The only power source capable of propelling us for interstellar travel would be the sun itself, in some way we cannot imagine. Perhaps the AIs themselves can help us think up a way to make wormholes or something, but the laws of physics are what they are. I wouldn’t bet on it.

https://philiprosedale.substack.com/p/interstellar-travel-isnt-possible




Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

That Uplifting Tweet You Just Shared? A Russian Troll Sent It

Image
Here’s what Russia’s 2020 disinformation operations look like, according to two experts on social media and propaganda. By   DARREN LINVILL   &   PATRICK WARREN Internet trolls don’t troll. Not the professionals at least. Professional trolls don’t go on social media to antagonize liberals or belittle conservatives. They are not narrow minded, drunk or angry. They don’t lack basic English language skills. They certainly aren’t  “somebody sitting on their bed that weighs 400 pounds,”  as the president once put it. Your stereotypical trolls do exist on social media, but the amateurs aren’t a threat to Western democracy. Professional trolls, on the other hand, are the tip of the spear in the new digital, ideological battleground. To combat the threat they pose, we must first understand them — and take them seriously. MORE: https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-features/russia-troll-2020-election-interference-twitter-916482/ Posted by Jamie B.
Read more

The Nightmare Scenario That Keeps Election Lawyers Up At Night -- And Could Hand Trump A Second Term

Image
The Nightmare Scenario That Keeps Election Lawyers Up At Night -- And Could Hand Trump A Second Term   (Photo: Photos: Getty Images) Americans will almost certainly go to bed on Nov. 3 without knowing who won the presidential election. Since millions of people will vote by mail, constraints on time and resources will slow ballot counting into potentially a weeks-long process. Voting patterns suggest it’s likely that President  Donald Trump  could end Election Day in the lead in certain key states, only to be overtaken by Democratic opponent  Joe Biden  when more votes are tallied.  This could create a nightmare scenario during the three months stretching from Election Day to the Jan. 20 inauguration: a battle on the state and congressional level over who is the legitimate winner. This could include Congress reconvening on Jan. 6, presided over by Vice President  Mike Pence , with no consensus over its potential role in choosing the next president. This is arguably the most likely of th
Read more

Philosophical Question #14 – Lifestyle Choices

Image
Here is an interesting question in my list of philosophical questions: 1.) Should governments have penalties for those who live unhealthy lifestyles? A list of unhealthy lifestyles would include things like smoking, drinking, illegal drugs, prostitution, and other “vice” type activities. I guess the “government penalties” would be referring to monetary punishments, withholding medical treatments (insurance companies would love that), possibly imposing/regulating very high (exorbitant) prices on things considered unhealthy in order to cut down on their use, and other possibilities. 2.) Or, would you say that living an unhealthy lifestyle, likely resulting in a LOT of eventual personal pain and suffering, should be punishment enough for unhealthy lifestyles? When people make bad choices in life, often in their youth where ignorance and immediate gratification takes them over,  3.) Should a society be obligated to help "fix" them, by way of tax money?   Is that part of
Read more