Interstellar travel impossible, therefore...

reply to post by stormbringer1701


Thanks for that. I had it completely wrong. I did a bit of study as you suggested and it seems that it is a common misconception. I'm still wrong but at the very least I have a lot of company.

Anyway below is a simplified answer which made sense and may help others as deluded as me....

"question 1: would the voyagers think they traveled faster than the speed of light.

answer 1: well yes, sort of, but only from a naive point of view. When they boosted up to speed, the distance to the star contracted, so the trip took much less time (without traveling at superluminal speed). When they boost back down, they might say, "Wow, we went 10 light years (in regular space) in less than 10 years ship time. We went faster than the speed of light." The fallacy, though, is that you are dividing regular space by ship time. You have to pick a reference frame and stick with it. There is no reference frame in which the ship went faster than c. "
au.answers.yahoo.com...

I still think cost, motivation, risk/reward and even morality play just as an important role in Interstellar travel.

Anyhoo, I'm happy to learn and I've gotta thank you for that.

Krahzeef_Ukhar
reply to post by stormbringer1701

 

Thanks for that. I had it completely wrong. I did a bit of study as you suggested and it seems that it is a common misconception. I'm still wrong but at the very least I have a lot of company.

Anyway below is a simplified answer which made sense and may help others as deluded as me....

"question 1: would the voyagers think they traveled faster than the speed of light.

answer 1: well yes, sort of, but only from a naive point of view. When they boosted up to speed, the distance to the star contracted, so the trip took much less time (without traveling at superluminal speed). When they boost back down, they might say, "Wow, we went 10 light years (in regular space) in less than 10 years ship time. We went faster than the speed of light." The fallacy, though, is that you are dividing regular space by ship time. You have to pick a reference frame and stick with it. There is no reference frame in which the ship went faster than c. "
au.answers.yahoo.com...

I still think cost, motivation, risk/reward and even morality play just as an important role in Interstellar travel.

Anyhoo, I'm happy to learn and I've gotta thank you for that.

You are welcome. when you get into the extreme end of relativity it gets a little tricky as you have seen. none of the obstacles to interstellar travel are insurmountable. it just a matter of maturing a couple of technologies and having the will and finances to do it. and if we can find an apparent FTL short cut so much the better.

Brometheus
If humans dont wipe each other out in the next 100 years it is very possible we would find away to bend space and time. It will take longer to implement it though.

You do realize that the science AND technology exists right now.

There is absolutely no reason that Terrestrial Humans could not build a starship and travel up to 50ly...this opens up a vast area within which are countless wonders.

reply to post by stormbringer1701


Interesting isn't it. The closer you go to the speed of light the slower time passes. Also the stronger the gravitational field the slower time passes. So we can actually time travel into the future to an extent using extreme speed and gravity. Something which seems like total science fiction but is actually possible. As for travelling backwards through time that seems far beyond our understanding at this point if it is even possible. Personally I think backwards time travel is probably impossible and agree with Hawking's views on that. But you never know it may be possible and highly risky...

You forget that the Universe is billions of years old. If there are other civilizations out there which are even a million years older than us, I'm sure they would've managed to come up with some sort of intergalactic form of travelling.

JimTSpock
reply to post by stormbringer1701

 

Interesting isn't it. The closer you go to the speed of light the slower time passes. Also the stronger the gravitational field the slower time passes. So we can actually time travel into the future to an extent using extreme speed and gravity. Something which seems like total science fiction but is actually possible. As for travelling backwards through time that seems far beyond our understanding at this point if it is even possible. Personally I think backwards time travel is probably impossible and agree with Hawking's views on that. But you never know it may be possible and highly risky...

it's even funnier than that. being near a massive object slows down time too. this has been proven due to the GPS fleet. they lose 6 one billionths of a second per year. this is corrected for by the system or else the GPS systems would be inaccurate by 6 miles.
i watch a video on this and even the pyramids cause time to go a tiny bit slower if you are near them.

and you should see what a wormhole can do to time. not only forward but backward (only to the point in time it was started up.) oh and you can use it to get to a destination before the wormhole gets to that destination itself. Hawking could be wrong or he could be right or he could be right and wrong at the same time.

Scientists and philosophers hate time travel so they have erected all sorts of conjectures and postulates to forbid it even though again relativity does not forbid it. They hate it so much that the anthropomorphosize the universe in an attempt to invoke a force against such things. they give nature and the universe a capital N or U. they say that quantum gravity what ever that happens to be in the future must forbid Closed Time Like Loops. that is a theory we do not have and may never have must do assassinate time travel for the sake of the universe.

but we already know time travel is possible. it is illustrated by many things including the relativistic rocket, massive objects not to mention fringe stories of secret gub'mint time machines and such. and wormhole theory and Dr Mallet's frame dragging theory actually allow time travel. at least as far as when the machine was first turned on or the wormhole was created. for now it is believed that time travel beyond that is impossible but it may turn out that that was just wishful thinking on the parts of the scientists and philosophers. or it may turn out that the way that is prevented is such travel evokes a parallel dimension so that no mucking about in the past can ever effect your own universe.

reply to post by stormbringer1701

it's even funnier than that. being near a massive object slows down time too. this has been proven due to the GPS fleet. they lose 6 one billionths of a second per year.

The GPS satellites are affected by two relativistic effects; gravity gradient and velocity.

Their velocity would time flow slower than it does on the surface.
Because they are in a weaker gravity field than that of the surface time would flow faster.

The gravity effect is significantly greater, the net result being that time flows faster on the satellites than on the surface. Such that if the clocks were not slowed before launch they would gain 38 microseconds a day compared to clocks on the surface. This would result of positional errors accumulating at the rate of about 10km/day. The system would be useless without the pre-launch corrections.

Phage
reply to post by stormbringer1701

 

it's even funnier than that. being near a massive object slows down time too. this has been proven due to the GPS fleet. they lose 6 one billionths of a second per year.

The GPS satellites are affected by two relativistic effects; gravity gradient and velocity.

Their velocity would time flow slower than it does on the surface.
Because they are in a weaker gravity field than that of the surface time would flow faster.

The gravity effect is significantly greater, the net result being that time flows faster on the satellites than on the surface. Such that if the clocks were not slowed before launch they would gain 38 microseconds a day compared to clocks on the surface. This would result of positional errors accumulating at the rate of about 10km/day. The system would be useless without the pre-launch corrections.

yup. you are correct . thank you

(but you do know that gravity gradient and mass are directly related. and the video i saw used the mass angle.)

3 minutes 40 seconds into this video: www.youtube.com...

tanka418

Brometheus
If humans dont wipe each other out in the next 100 years it is very possible we would find away to bend space and time. It will take longer to implement it though.

You do realize that the science AND technology exists right now.

There is absolutely no reason that Terrestrial Humans could not build a starship and travel up to 50ly...this opens up a vast area within which are countless wonders.

almost but not quite. a number of systems need to be developed first. i think that the mere act of starting a project could bring all the necessary parts to fruition but really right now we could not take any off the shelf technologies to do the following:

a closed cycle life support system with redundancies.

a propulsion system to get us there in a reasonable amount of time. by 2018 we will have it (1st generation pulsed fusion) if things go right. but right now it's not yet on the shelf. we might be able to use Felber's trick but we cannot count on it until it is tried and it succeeds. if it does succeed then anything will suffice as a propulsion system. no need to wait for fusion.

impact mitigation or avoidance or active countermeasures for impactors larger than sand grain or fine gravel size. we can handle stuff up to that size now because even though it has not been fielded yet we know an M2P2 would work and it is a simple device to make.

Sufficient living and works space to keep the crew from going psychotic. we don't have that down and the tendency is to pack people together like sardines in a tin. this is because we lack the ability to put large and or massive payloads into orbit.

Radiation protection. yes and no. we could do it with the drinking water or by making a storm shelter but these aren't optimal. the M2P2 will help but not for energetic gamma and X rays or galactic cosmic rays.

we have navigation nailed. XNAV is real hardware.

and those are the biggies. we are so close but not quite ready yet. of course we are so close that just starting the project might suffice to drive all of the enabling factors to maturity.

JimTSpock
reply to post by stormbringer1701

 

Interesting isn't it. The closer you go to the speed of light the slower time passes. Also the stronger the gravitational field the slower time passes. So we can actually time travel into the future to an extent using extreme speed and gravity. Something which seems like total science fiction but is actually possible. As for travelling backwards through time that seems far beyond our understanding at this point if it is even possible. Personally I think backwards time travel is probably impossible and agree with Hawking's views on that. But you never know it may be possible and highly risky...

In my opinion...time travel into the future is only relative to star light photons, that take so many light years to reach another star system. In other words, you can say you traveled into the future based on the light from a different star system from your home planet --- take off on a starship --- say at light speed to the star, spend a few days, and travel back to your original take off point. But the result will be: no time travel into the future for the occupants that traveled to the distant star --- which means that when they came back to the original takeoff point --- none of their relatives that stayed at the take-off point, would not have aged any differently than the occupants of the starship.

I really like the solution to interstellar travel in the novel 'the mote in gods eye' where starcraft travel between stars using what the author
called an equotential interstellar flux connecting stars, where entering at it a particular speed means you leave the flux at the same speed next to the other star, although the flux started and ended quite a bit away from each star.
One other thing, Ezekiel's visitors, if they were interstellar visitors why did they use chemical rockets to leave the earth? (ascended to heaven on a pillar of fire)

Misquote. sorry.

Erno86


In my opinion...time travel into the future is only relative to star light photons, that take so many light years to reach another star system. In other words, you can say you traveled into the future based on the light from a different star system from your home planet --- take off on a starship --- say at light speed to the star, spend a few days, and travel back to your original take off point. But the result will be: no time travel into the future for the occupants that traveled to the distant star --- which means that when they came back to the original takeoff point --- none of their relatives that stayed at the take-off point, would not have aged any differently than the occupants of the starship.

edit on 13-3-2014 by Erno86 because: added a word

I'm sorry but that isn't even true for trips on an airplane much less a relativistic spaceship. clocks on a plane tick differently than clocks on the ground. this has been tested in experiments to verify Einstein's relativity.

Einstein proved that interstellar travel is possible, and it doesn't even have to take a long time. Wormholes and warp drives are both ways of navigating the universe faster than light can travel. Obviously the intelligence and energy needed would be massive, but there is nothing about interstellar travel that is "impossible".

reply to post by stormbringer1701


Clocks may tick differently...but basically --- humans age the same way --- whether on a interstellar cruise to a distant star system, in relation to the people on their home planet.

OMsk3ptic
Einstein proved that interstellar travel is possible, and it doesn't even have to take a long time. Wormholes and warp drives are both ways of navigating the universe faster than light can travel. Obviously the intelligence and energy needed would be massive, but there is nothing about interstellar travel that is "impossible".

the intelligence required isn't really that much. apparently just getting the wormhole is the hard part. the part everyone thinks is hard (getting the wormhole to go someplace useful) is apparently very easy and far far easier than getting a wormhole in the first place. wormholes may be steered enroute from the near end by doing stuff to the near end thanks to quantum back pressure.

warp drive is more complicated. it takes thinking near the level of Einstein to figure out how to do it. but it is being done and Einstein was only human. He was just very very very motivated and disciplined to see it through. he actually stunk at math. and his relativity actually didn't come out of the blue. nearly all of the concepts that went into relativity were the creations of his predescessors. he just formalized it all together. It took him two years of studying under a tutor to learn and master the form of math necessary to finish formalizing his theory.

Slamminuk
You forget that the Universe is billions of years old. If there are other civilizations out there which are even a million years older than us, I'm sure they would've managed to come up with some sort of intergalactic form of travelling.

Big assumption given that certain species tend to wipe themselves out. In addition there are no large scale structures that a Type III civilization would have built in evidence.

The other thing people forget is that at FTL speed, you still have to stop, turn around, get going again and that would take a long time. Also, you couldn't get to close to planetary formations using a full size FTL drive, for fear of distrupting their system (gravity distortion effects).

Again people are being vague or too optimistic - can we find space going sentient civilizations which we can relate to in our own Galaxy? It's doubtful. Appreciate what we have here people, we're likely a rare thing.

pikestaff
I really like the solution to interstellar travel in the novel 'the mote in gods eye' where starcraft travel between stars using what the author
called an equotential interstellar flux connecting stars, where entering at it a particular speed means you leave the flux at the same speed next to the other star, although the flux started and ended quite a bit away from each star.
One other thing, Ezekiel's visitors, if they were interstellar visitors why did they use chemical rockets to leave the earth? (ascended to heaven on a pillar of fire)

Ezekiel's visitors, might have used a typical starship, that has been labeled by WW 2 allied pilot's as Foo Fighters. Fiery balls...sometimes big and sometimes much smaller. I've seen one myself...way back in 1976. I speculate that fiery fusion plasma for the foofighter, has to be generated in places that lack starlight, in order to feed the photon engine with photons from the plasma.

Erno86
reply to post by stormbringer1701

 

Clocks may tick differently...but basically --- humans age the same way --- whether on a interstellar cruise to a distant star system, in relation to the people on their home planet.

the ticking differently is a measure of differences in the flow of time. it's not perceptible to human senses for plane trips or even orbital satellites and space stations. but when you get to relativistic trips to stars the difference becomes apparent. if you experience ten years of a clock ticking you have aged ten years and your body knows it. if you experience a few weeks you don't notice you have aged. this is exactly the case if you take a relativistic trip to alpha proxima. the astronauts experience a few weeks of aging but upon their return they see everyone is nearly 9 years older older. you may say that since we have not had astronauts take such a trip it's just speculation. but no it is just a logical progression of the time differences we already know are true from observation of clocks on earth and in space.

Maverick7

Slamminuk
You forget that the Universe is billions of years old. If there are other civilizations out there which are even a million years older than us, I'm sure they would've managed to come up with some sort of intergalactic form of travelling.

Big assumption given that certain species tend to wipe themselves out. In addition there are no large scale structures that a Type III civilization would have built in evidence.

The other thing people forget is that at FTL speed, you still have to stop, turn around, get going again and that would take a long time. Also, you couldn't get to close to planetary formations using a full size FTL drive, for fear of distrupting their system (gravity distortion effects).

Again people are being vague or too optimistic - can we find space going sentient civilizations which we can relate to in our own Galaxy? It's doubtful. Appreciate what we have here people, we're likely a rare thing.

perhaps the way civilizations express their sophistication is different from what we imagine they should be. maybe characterizations like they should harness the energy of a whole star or a whole galaxy and build Dyson spheres is just nonsense to them. we are after all cavemen still painting ourselves blue to them if we are even that sophisticated. and how could a cave man guess what a advanced man or civilization would want to do or could achieve?

we say they should build Dyson spheres because we cannot conceive that they might have a better power source like ZPE or something like that. maybe they have monopole conversion reactors. or a strange matter reactor. maybe they said why spent the time and resources to construct a shell around a star so that it can flare and magnetically reconnect and cook our whole civilization with one catastrophe. and it isn't permanent anyway. even if it does not cook you in a sporadic tantrum eventually it will leave the main sequence. often in very fatal ways particularly if you live on the inner surface of a shell around it.