Outer Space Thread

[Arthur Dent]

Will be interesting to see how the research on those planets develops. Since it would only take us a few hundred million years to get there, we better get started now!

If you take as the standard current probes headed out of the solar system, the fastest is Voyager 1, travelling at ~0.0057% of the speed of light, so if had been pointed in the right direction, it would take less than a million years for it to get there! No problem.

[AWvsCBsteeeerike3]

Absolutely crazy how close '40 light years' sounds and then how far it is when you remember that a light year is 5.8 trillion miles. And at 20k miles/hour or so it would still take over a million years to get there. Develop something faster, NASA, sheesh.

[wart57]

Absolutely crazy how close '40 light years' sounds and then how far it is when you remember that a light year is 5.8 trillion miles. And at 20k miles/hour or so it would still take over a million years to get there. Develop something faster, NASA, sheesh.

[Fat Strat]

Absolutely crazy how close '40 light years' sounds and then how far it is when you remember that a light year is 5.8 trillion miles. And at 20k miles/hour or so it would still take over a million years to get there. Develop something faster, NASA, sheesh.

I thought the same thing at first. 40 light years! That's practically next door! Why did it take us so long to find it? Thinking that it would only take us 40 years to get there... Of course, by the time that we get around to actually needing to get to planets like these, we'll probably be able to make the journey that quickly.


That brings up another question for you science and space fanatics out there... is it actually realistic/possible that we could develop some kind of instant or super-fast travel system in space? Obviously not any time soon. Just wondering if there are theories out there where "the math works" or whatever.

[AWvsCBsteeeerike3]

Not even sure I have a rudimentary understanding of space travel and how it would work, but pretty sure Einstein's theory of relativity says an object can't travel faster than the speed of light. But, there are thoughts that perhaps space time can be bent to pull objects that are farther away closer by bending that space time fabric. No idea how realistic this is. But, I'd be hesitant to say given enough time and resources humanity (or AI) couldn't figure it out.

And, going forward, I'd put more money on figuring out how to manipulate the space time issue than accelerating objects to near the speed of light. After all, if we want to be able to travel around the universe, it's not like figuring out how to travel only at the speed of light would be very useful as it's what some 50 billion light years wide. And, even at the speed of light it would take billions of years to reach areas. Even these planets 40 light years away would take 40 years to reach....I think....and even that 'short' time is incredibly long in human years.

[go birds]

even if it was possible to travel at that speed, there aren't enough resources on our planet to make such a trip possible

[IMADreamer]

The other hurdles to think about is getting the amount of mass needed for that trip off this planet in the first place. 40 years means you are talking about sending a lot of people, who will reproduce and create the people that will probably inhabit the planet we are going to. You'll need ways to grow food, make water, and entertainment for decades. Doctors will be needed. You'll need things to treat cancer and heart disease as well as other ailments that may come up.

True deep space exploration, even with technological breakthroughs that allow us to travel faster means solving multi generational problems, because it will be a multi generational event.

[tlombard]

even if it was possible to travel at that speed, there aren't enough resources on our planet to make such a trip possible

Especially at the rate we are using them which is probably only going to get worse here shortly, at least in the US if the current administration gets their way.

[AWvsCBsteeeerike3]

The other hurdles to think about is getting the amount of mass needed for that trip off this planet in the first place. 40 years means you are talking about sending a lot of people, who will reproduce and create the people that will probably inhabit the planet we are going to. You'll need ways to grow food, make water, and entertainment for decades. Doctors will be needed. You'll need things to treat cancer and heart disease as well as other ailments that may come up.

True deep space exploration, even with technological breakthroughs that allow us to travel faster means solving multi generational problems, because it will be a multi generational event.

It's such a weird way to think about things. Let's just go with the time required to travel to a new place at 40 years. How do you even go about doing that? The clearest answer, I think, is to send a lot of material to create embryos. Send a team of, what, 20 people that have everything you'd need. Of course, they'd need to be able to create water and food. No way you can send years worth of food and water and get off the planet. Perhaps send a space station years in advance that is stocked with materials. Blah blah blah. Almost impossible but for those that like to dream, not impossible.

[Arthur Dent]

Without any exotic physics, you can imagine one day getting to the point where you could send probes that can make the journey in thousands of years. Given cosmic timescales (the Earth has on the order of a billion years left), that's actually plenty fast enough to explore the galaxy, though it's probably harder to imagine the equivalent of the ancient Egyptians building an exploitation for us.