Our current space tech so depressing

Don't you need like no mass and a limitless amount of energy to go at the speed of light? I just say we should start work on folding space and time so we don't have to travel all those lightyears to our destination.... 8)

Unless it turns out like Event Horizon... :oops:
 
BlueTsunami said:
Don't you need like no mass and a limitless amount of energy to go at the speed of light? I just say we should start work on folding space and time so we don't have to travel all those lightyears to our destination.... 8)

Unless it turns out like Event Horizon... :oops:

I enjoyed that movie. More than Episode 3. :LOL:

But yes, in theory speed of light can't be reached by something with mass, unless you have infinite energy... errr... that's the whole point of it being impossible...
 
That's according to einsteinian physics anyway. Who's to say that that is ultimate knowledge about space and time?
 
It could be argued, that there are many different ways to accomplish something, if you have enough intelligence, energy and a sufficiently advanced industrial base. And if all else fails, there is always the brute force approach.

If we exist for long enough to develop all that, even things that might be seen as impossible could be done, probably by circumventing the obstacles. I can think of a few obsure ways in which we could transport ourselves through the galaxy and arrive much faster at the destination than a photon would take to do the same, that don't demand faster than light travel.

A really intersting way would be, that if time is quantized after all, and there is some "bookkeeping" done in the background that simplifies things to objects, it might be possible to trick the universe into thinking that some of those objects are at a different place than they were a moment before. In other words: teleportation.

But that would only work if the universe accounts with objects and not only individual particles. Otherwise, uncertanty being what it is, you could not have all the particles keep their relative distance and composition to one another, and the result would be very messy.

:D
 
DiGuru said:
It could be argued, that there are many different ways to accomplish something, if you have enough intelligence, energy and a sufficiently advanced industrial base. And if all else fails, there is always the brute force approach.

If we exist for long enough to develop all that, even things that might be seen as impossible could be done, probably by circumventing the obstacles. I can think of a few obsure ways in which we could transport ourselves through the galaxy and arrive much faster at the destination than a photon would take to do the same, that don't demand faster than light travel.

A really intersting way would be, that if time is quantized after all, and there is some "bookkeeping" done in the background that simplifies things to objects, it might be possible to trick the universe into thinking that some of those objects are at a different place than they were a moment before. In other words: teleportation.

But that would only work if the universe accounts with objects and not only individual particles. Otherwise, uncertanty being what it is, you could not have all the particles keep their relative distance and composition to one another, and the result would be very messy.

:D

What I want to see is more in depth study on String Theory....if the universe is really made up of loops that vibrate at different frequencies to create matter then that could be applied in some way. But I guess once you get to that point (size wise) things become to random and chaotic.

I love technology and science, not for the technological breakthroughs (as exciting as they are) but that absolute strange and mysterious things that make up our reality...
 
I read a year oir 2 back about the european comet probe that used ion propulsion that the tech can reach 50% the speed of light. Making interstellar probes viable tho itd cost a bloody fortune to do it now. So Id say its more a question of $ than tech as to some of what we can right now.
 
whats up with the usa space ships ? I hear they put the discovery back in rotation ? aren't they over 20 years old now ? For god sakes build a new design. With cutting edge tech. Mabye we can cut the time to the moon in half and make it cheaper to do
 
The shuttle is on its way out but the current budget means a replacement wont be available for a few years. With russian rockets so dirt cheap itd be better tho bad for national pride to buy those instead.
 
Another thing, if we ever go at light speed then how would we pilot it at such great speed? Bec'se reaction time would be in nano seconds? Otherwise BOOM!
 
Thats the current situation as well... most probes go 15-30 000 mph. You take your chances but space is mostly empty.
 
If we have to contact other civilisations then we have to break lightspeed barrier. For example lets assume we broadcase a radio messege accross space, now radio waves also travel at lightspeed. Presuming if it ever reaches a planet supposing 1000 lights years away from earth. Would it mean that they would receive it 1000 years later? If they do same thing then we will listen it 1000 years later, so there will be no "real time" communication ever....so depressing. :cry:
 
Deepak said:
If we have to contact other civilisations then we have to break lightspeed barrier. For example lets assume we broadcase a radio messege accross space, now radio waves also travel at lightspeed. Presuming if it ever reaches a planet supposing 1000 lights years away from earth. Would it mean that they would receive it 1000 years later? If they do same thing then we will listen it 1000 years later, so there will be no "real time" communication ever....so depressing. :cry:
Depends on what we do in those 2000 years . We may end up on planets much closer to them than before . Who knows what state the earth will be in and if we are even here (Both the sense of us being dead or settled on a new planet to exploit )
 
I dont believe in radio for interstellar comms... the new accelerated light particle experiments that have been done shows there has to be other tech involved there and Id rather see built a detector of that kind of light energy than more seti radio detectors. But even that might be surperseded by interstellar civilizations with other unknown tech. I think seti is a big waste for now... Building those next gen telescopes and eventualy sending off ion drive probes to interesting candidates for other planets with life is the one big interesting thing to do in space science for the next generation.
 
why not send out probes that beam out radio waves when traveling ? Look at that probe that just left our universe . If that was beaming radio waves out in another universe it would have a better chance of finding life forms
 
jvd said:
why not send out probes that beam out radio waves when traveling ? Look at that probe that just left our universe . If that was beaming radio waves out in another universe it would have a better chance of finding life forms

Inverse square law. You need lots of power.
 
Even the most powerful radio emitters on earth dont get far... one guy on discovery channel said at most 40 light years... and even arecibo class radio telescopes cant hear it...
 
Deepak said:
Another thing, if we ever go at light speed then how would we pilot it at such great speed? Bec'se reaction time would be in nano seconds? Otherwise BOOM!

If you hit, say, a micro-meteor the size of half a grain of sand (eg perhaps 1/100th of a gram) travelling at 1/2 the speed of light, it'd have ~11x10^9 joules of kinetic energy, which is the equivalent of about 2 tonnes of TNT.
 
Would that energy dissipate through the entire vehicle or simply give the grain of sand extreme penetration and create a tiny hole through a lot of the vehicle...

I suppose you could posit a moderately sized asteroid at the front as a shield.
 
DiGuru said:
Inverse square law. You need lots of power.

Inverse square law only applies is you broadcast in all directions. If you collimate the transmissions as a beam the fall-off of intensity with distance is much less rapid than 1/r^2 (which is why communications dishes are generally parabolic).
 
Back
Top