Travelling to The Stars - My Mind Is Having Trouble Comprehending Some Things.

THANK-YOU ALL!!! Due to the arrival of the U.S. Presidential Election and it's attention-grabbing threads here on ATS, I completely forgot that I had started this thread!!

So in summary... We know how to get to a specific star without a lot of guess-work. That's great! Also, the odds of it still being there are good too. Excellent!

Gosseyn's post was thought-provoking to the extreme. We launch a ship to a star traveling at sub-light speed. Years later, man invents light-speed travel. Launch a ship to the same star and it arrives sooner than the one that preceded it, decades earlier.

I don't think it's in our interest to head out to the stars at sub-light speed, unless the solar-system is facing certain doom, is it? But what star system would be the best-chance target, with an Earth-like planet, based on what we know now?

-cwm

carewemust wrote:
The obstacles and unknowns of traveling to objects that are light-years away, boggles my laymen mind. Maybe if we could travel FAST ENOUGH, and had some type of viewer to see how a star system is doing at that moment, I wouldn't be so dumbfounded.

I think we need would need to map out all the possible obstacles (which is going to take some time) that could interfere with our trajectory. And then take it in bite-size chunks just like in Star-Trek.
We have our road-map and projections for our source (earth) and target (whatever that may be) and reference targets around both. Now we may need to use 2 sets of co-ordinates because of the large numbers. 0,0,0 local for earth and 0,0,0 local for our target. This may only make sense to some people who know a little vector maths.
Ok, so we now have 2 matrices. We will need to plot a 3rd or even 4th matrice for all the space junk/meteorites/obstacles in the way so we aren't doing too much math at once (I think, this is getting harder and harder).
Then we have kind of layers (each layer is a matrix full of calculations) and use MTF type of layered deep learning to combine them all or atleast the matrices we need for that point.
Ok, so how do we avoid these obstacles using all this math that is broken into 2 sets of matrices? (earth and target local co-ords) We would need to fly at the speed of light through the gaps we know are safe and I would believe we would have sensors on-board the ship also to alert us of incoming obstacles also.
When we get to the edge of the 1st matrix we then need to basically slow right down and stop. Do some more calculations on-board the ship to re-orientate us to the 2nd matrix grid and continue on.
I'm sure its a lot harder than that also but I tried my best to put my opinion foward.

Oh we could also just try and jump some obstacles with teleportation?
Great stuff to think about carewemust - Peace.

P.S. After a little more thought, we may need to break the journey up into more than 2 local grids (matrices) and stop a few more times on the way to the target to make sure its safe.

But what star system would be the best-chance target, with an Earth-like planet, based on what we know now?

Wouldn't it be the constellation Cygnus and Kepler-452b (Earth 2.0? as its nicknamed?)





To speed things up, why can't we send the information forward in time and back in time to ensure we all get it?
Does it make sense?

a reply to: LonnyZone

Your illustration and plans demonstrate how challenging star travel is, LonnyZone. Maybe we should focus on communicating with the aliens who visit Earth. Make friends.. and they may share technology, saving us hundreds of years (and lots of human deaths) of trial and error learning.

a reply to: carewemust

Your right carewemust, first we need to have peace on earth, then with our neighbors and then further and further out it goes. But how do we get peace with our neighbors if we can't have peace with ourselves?

a reply to: LonnyZone

That system might be too close to our SOL star system, LonnyZone. If a catastrophe is headed towards our solar system, it might be so large that Cygnus-Kepler is destroyed too.

Wait a minute! You and I will be long gone from this Earth before the things we're discussing are anywhere near production. I think we're wasting our time for the moment?

a reply to: LonnyZone

Sadly, you're probably right, LonnyZone. The aliens see us a dangerous barbarians who need to stay right where we are until we humans can get our act together.

They're just stopping here for a look at lower lifeforms (humans), take a few readings, re-charge their (?) in Earth's thunderstorms, and continue on their way.

Sadly, you're probably right, LonnyZone. The aliens see us a dangerous barbarians who need to stay right where we are until we humans can get our act together. They're just stopping here for a look at lower lifeforms (humans), take a few readings, re-charge their (?) in Earth's thunderstorms, and continue on their way.

To get to that point I imagined myself as a higher being stumbling across our little planet and taking a closer look at whats going on.

Loonyzone wrote:
"I didn't like (thinking third person here) what I saw so instead of just erasing them, I decided that they deserve a chance to get it right, our interferance should be taken into account also as Causality effect may have altered them and their awareness. So because these earthlings think they are so smart, we'll just keep them at bay until they can figure things out for themselves."

Carewemust: Why don't we just write it all down on ink and pen and paper so it doesn't get edited and send it forward to ourselves all around the world every 3 months or so via good ol snail-mail? message should read something like "To ourselves: please help us find peace before our neighbors get sick of our wars. Please send back to Ron Mallet's little box how we should find peace in time"

a reply to: carewemust

But what star system would be the best-chance target, with an Earth-like planet, based on what we know now?

Here's the top 5 listed by IFLscience

1. Kepler 438b Kepler 438b (ESI=0.88) has the highest ESI of any exoplanet known. Discovered in 2015 around a red dwarf star, significantly smaller and cooler than our sun, it has a radius only 12% larger than Earth’s. It orbits the star, which is 470 light years from Earth, every 35 days and is in its habitable zone, the region around a star which is neither too hot nor too cold for orbiting planets to support liquid water on the surface. As with other discoveries by Kepler around faint stars, the planet’s mass has not been measured, but if its composition is rocky, it may be only 1.4 times that of the Earth’s with a surface temperature between 0°C and 60°C. However, the ESI is not a foolproof method for classifying the Earth-like nature of a planet. It has recently been found that Kepler 438b’s host star regularly sends out powerful flares of radiation, which may render the planet uninhabitable after all.

2. Gliese 667Cc Gliese 667Cc (ESI=0.85) was discovered in 2011 orbiting a red dwarf in the Gliese 667 triple star system, just 24 light years away. It was found by the radial velocity method, which is a measure of the small movement a star makes as it responds to the gravitational tug of the planet. The planet’s mass has been estimated at 3.8 times the Earth’s, but we don’t know its size. This is because the planet does not pass in front of the star, which would allow us to measure the planet’s radius. With an orbital period of 28 days, it sits in the habitable zone of this cool star, with a possible surface temperature of around 5°C.

3. Kepler 442b Kepler 442b(ESI=0.84) is a planet 1.3 times the size of the Earth discovered in 2015. It is orbiting a star cooler than the sun, about 1100 light years away. Its orbital period of 112 days places it in its star’s habitable zone, but with a surface temperature that could be as low as -40°C. However, by comparison, the temperature on Mars can be -125°C near its poles in the winter. Once again, the exoplanet’s mass is not known, but if it has a rocky composition, it may be only 2.3 times the mass of the Earth. Artist’s impression of Kepler as it looks at planets transiting distant stars. NASA Ames/ W Stenzel/wikimedia

4. Kepler 62e & 62f These two planets (ESI=0.83 & 0.67) were discovered in 2013 with the Kepler telescope, which spotted their transits in front of their host star. This star, located about 1200 light years away from us, is somewhat cooler than the sun. With planetary radii of 1.6 and 1.4 times that of the Earth respectively, their orbital periods of 122 and 267 days mean that they both fall within the star’s habitable zone. As with many other planets discovered by Kepler, their masses have not been measured, but are estimated at over 30 times the mass of the Earth in each case. The temperatures of each could permit liquid water to exist on their surfaces, depending on their atmospheric composition.

5. Kepler 452b Kepler 452b (ESI=0.83) was discovered in 2015 and was the first potentially Earth-like planet orbiting in the habitable zone of a star similar to our Sun. The planet’s radius is 1.6 times that of the Earth and it takes 385 days to orbit its star, which is 1400 light years away. Because the star is too faint to measure its movement due to the gravitational tug by Kepler 452b, the planet’s mass is unknown. However it has been predicted to be at least five times that of the Earth and the planet’s surface temperature is estimated between -20°C and +10°C.

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