Exactly, someone who has a sound understanding of the real limitations.
I was going to post almost this, to a T.
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Milky Way Estimate: 50 Billion Exoplanets
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Exactly, someone who has a sound understanding of the real limitations.
I was going to post almost this, to a T.
Ahriman4891
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I just wonder, why do some people think of 'life' as being similar in composition to life on Earth. There is no 'law' that states that life has to be carbon-based.
The estimate of 50 billion exoplanets just goes to show massive our galaxy is.
I do agree that if any alien life knows about us, they really don't want to visit...
The estimate of 50 billion exoplanets just goes to show massive our galaxy is.
I do agree that if any alien life knows about us, they really don't want to visit...
This is the best thread I've read in a while. Keep it going and keep the religious talk out of it.
I've spent my years walking around with the Contact "waste of space" mentality, never really thinking things through. My mind is suddenly racing. Well done, and sad...
The Day the Earth Stood Still (1951) - too bad even 60 years later nobody gets it.
Just wanted to inform, your body does move at the same speed as your vehicle. Imagine when the car hits a brick wall. Despite the car coming to a spot, your body would still be in motion. Without the safety measures such as seatbelt and airbags, you'd be flying out of the windshield...
Further illustrated by the Gravitrons you ride in at fair grounds that spin at a high rate of speed - you become one with the wall. Damage and dangers caused by insane acceleration is quite real.
A lot of people just don't 'get it'. Take the closest star to our system, Alpha Centauri. The chances of having a planet like earth are very very small. Let's just say for argument's sake that there is an earth like planet circling. If we, right now, had a ship that could instantly go to the speed of light and maintain it, it would take 4.4 years to get there. Want to come home? 4.4 years. So, even if we managed to get a colony there and overcome the whole traveling at the speed of light thing, which we haven't, it would take you nearly 10 (earth) years to go see your best friend living there. In reality, you wouldn't really age, but everyone you know would.
How fast is fast? Want to go there by jetliner? Assuming you have a fast jet and travel at 700mph for years continuously and Alpha Centauri is 4.4 light years away...
Alpha Centauri is...
Speed of light is ~3x10^8 m/s =>671,000,000 miles/hour.
671,000,000 miles/hr * 24hrs/day * 365 days/year * 4.4years = 25,863,024,000,000 miles
Your jet would travel...
700miles/hr * 24hrs/day * 364 days/year = 6,132,000 miles/year.
It would take you...
25,863,024,000,000 miles / 6,132,000 miles/year = 4,217,714.23 years to reach it or 52,721.43 lifetimes, assuming a lifetime is ~80 years.
...do you get it?
And this doesn't just apply to travel, communication as well. Like I said in my previous post, the scales are astronomical. I am a sci-fi person. I have always enjoyed it. It wasn't until I sat down and truly tried to understand what we are dealing with that I grasped the problems. Unless something major changes in our capabilities or understanding of physics, it is all a no-go. There was a show a while ago illustrating this point that Stephen Hawking was part of that dealt with time travel and how we could possibly accomplish it that drove home many of these points about the vastness and our currently limited capabilities. Unless we figure out a way to terraform the moon or mars (gravity issues prevent the whole sustainable atmosphere like we have on earth, but, whatever), the way it stands right now, we don't pass go. We don't collect $200.00, we don't meaningfully leave Earth.
These are our limitations. Physics places the exact same limitations on anyone else. Timing, distance, physics. It is all working against us and any potential 'them'.
How fast is fast? Want to go there by jetliner? Assuming you have a fast jet and travel at 700mph for years continuously and Alpha Centauri is 4.4 light years away...
Alpha Centauri is...
Speed of light is ~3x10^8 m/s =>671,000,000 miles/hour.
671,000,000 miles/hr * 24hrs/day * 365 days/year * 4.4years = 25,863,024,000,000 miles
Your jet would travel...
700miles/hr * 24hrs/day * 364 days/year = 6,132,000 miles/year.
It would take you...
25,863,024,000,000 miles / 6,132,000 miles/year = 4,217,714.23 years to reach it or 52,721.43 lifetimes, assuming a lifetime is ~80 years.
...do you get it?
And this doesn't just apply to travel, communication as well. Like I said in my previous post, the scales are astronomical. I am a sci-fi person. I have always enjoyed it. It wasn't until I sat down and truly tried to understand what we are dealing with that I grasped the problems. Unless something major changes in our capabilities or understanding of physics, it is all a no-go. There was a show a while ago illustrating this point that Stephen Hawking was part of that dealt with time travel and how we could possibly accomplish it that drove home many of these points about the vastness and our currently limited capabilities. Unless we figure out a way to terraform the moon or mars (gravity issues prevent the whole sustainable atmosphere like we have on earth, but, whatever), the way it stands right now, we don't pass go. We don't collect $200.00, we don't meaningfully leave Earth.
These are our limitations. Physics places the exact same limitations on anyone else. Timing, distance, physics. It is all working against us and any potential 'them'.
I'd have to say that carbon is probably it. though certainly there is no law you need no more than to look at carbon itself. it's the 3rd most abundant element in the universe behind hydrogen and helium, it can form more molecules than all other elements combined. i really don't like the odds of non-carbon life existing out there. as for 50 billion exoplanets, my guess is that's a conservative estimate, the milky way is absolutely massive.
for the person who said something like why would want to take hope away from someone. that's ridiculous, believe what you want to believe nothing is impossible. i just have a problem with people tacking on ridiculous figures onto legitimate scientific data and tricking people into believing it simply because they've slipped it into something credible like a joseph smith of the science community.
Believe what you like, prepare for the alien invasion if you so choose. the belief in aliens isn't ridiculous just something that i don't believe in.
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MindBuster
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How about Life Expectancy, by the time Humans can travel at lightspeed the Human Life Expectancy may be 700 years or 10000 years for that matter, making a 4.4 lightyear trip and back like a 2 week vacation.
MindBuster
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/edit
Missed your, "assuming a lifetime is ~80 years", but anyways.
Missed your, "assuming a lifetime is ~80 years", but anyways.
Mr. Pedantic
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A lot of people say that. I doubt many of them 'get it'.
You don't. The real question is not why anyone would want to go to Alpha Centauri by jetliner, the real question is why you chose such a stupid vessel to highlight an otherwise very important point.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abunda...lements#Abundance_of_elements_in_the_Universe
And silicon can form as many bonds with the same other elements. It's just that carbon is a lot more common and easier to form.
As for needing to terraform the moon to leave the earth in any meaningful way? i don't think so, i'd place my bets for deep space travel viability on the space elevator using carbon nanotubes. it won't be too much longer until this technology improves enough, well at least faster than we'll be able to haul terraforming quantities of material to even the moon. besides i don't see if given the choice why choose lunar or mars construction over LEO construction. you don't want to build an interstellar spacecraft within the confines of something that has to deal with escaping even the relatively weak gravity of the moon. let alone dealing with moon dust, day/night cycles and being a massive meteor magnet.
best bet would be to construct a small pressurized factory in orbit to assemble payloads and minimize work inside spacesuits. trying to build on another planet seems a bit silly and redundant to me.
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best bet would be to construct a small pressurized factory in orbit to assemble payloads and minimize work inside spacesuits. trying to build on another planet seems a bit silly and redundant to me.
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Not completely, no. The scale is big enough I have trouble with it. Point taken about the vessel. What would you prefer? The space shuttle? A constantly accelerating ion engined spaceship? A trikey? The scale is the problem. Sure, the person travelling might not age, but the galaxy as you know it, including friends, family, basically your entire civilization would age, die and continue.
The vessel doesn't matter, but if you want to dwell on it to make me look stupid, that's fine with me.
Mr. Pedantic
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Probably the most suitable are only theoretical, because the optimal would be able to accelerate at a constant 1 (or more) gees for the entire duration. So a much higher-powered ion engine-powered ship would be best, likely. But even the space shuttle would be more appropriate than a jet airliner. It wouldn't even be able to get to LEO, even if it had enough oxygen/
Yeah well the other day i saw something that said that a tortoise travels faster than the mars rover. now does this mean that nasa should strap cameras to tortoises and send them to mars? did they account for the fact they need to breathe then factor the movement restrictions from wearing a pressurized suit and how that would affect their overall speed? yeah so what if a conventional jet engine is useless in the vacuum of space its hardly the point. how about how long would it take to get a bio-diesel vw combi van to alpha-centuri? it's about taking something familiar to give some scale to the length of the journey.
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Mr. Pedantic
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You're contradicting yourself. By the same token as your latter point, I suppose you say it's reasonable to measure how implausible travelling from Chicago to New York is by giving the time it takes to walk between the two places instead of driving or flying?
Well how about you figure out how to accelerate anything more than a few atoms to anything close to light speed. tell me how you plan to navigate a spacecraft going that fast through something as nearby as the Oort cloud. if you can't see it you can't pre-calculate it not to mention how hard it is to work against enersha to correct your course on the fly. we're nowhere near stretching the current known limitations of physics for such a journey. i know in star trek they never seem to hit a rock in warp speed unfortunately that's just fiction. i can't imagine the sheer devastation a micro-meteor would inflict on an object travelling even half light speed. pretty sure it wouldn't be too pleasant. how far away do you think you can see a marble sized rock a light year from the nearest star?
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Phoenix333
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That's because in Star Trek they have a device called a navigational deflector. It's a forward-pointing beam that shoves stuff out of the way. They also have subspace sensors that can scan at faster than light speeds so they can see where they are going. The ships in Star Trek also use Bussard ram-scoop collectors to pick up interstellar hydrogen while traveling to help replenish their deuterium supply for the matter-antimatter reactor and auxiliary fusion reactors. Star Trek may be science fiction, but a lot of real science was referenced in the creation of the various series. Some example of references to the navigational deflector:
In Star Trek: The Motion Picture, the warp engines imbalance and cause a wormhole effect, and an asteroid is drawn into it. You can hear Lt. Ilia report "navigational deflectors coming online", followed by "navigational deflectors offline," as the wormhole effect overloads the deflectors. They had to destroy the asteroid with a photon torpedo to avoid hitting it. If the deflectors were online the asteroid would not have been an issue.
In an episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation, the Enterprise D is confronted by small ships armed with lasers. Riker quips that they wouldn't even penetrate the ship's navigational deflectors, let alone the actual shields.
Now as for whether something like a navigational deflector or subspace sensors are possible, that's where the leap is made from science fact to science fiction. I imagine quantum entanglement might hold a clue to developing the latter, but such science is only in its infancy. It's all moot without sustainable power for the trip anyway. A working sustainable fusion reactor has yet to be developed, and without at least fusion power, Mars is about as far as man can get, if even that far.
rat
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The biggest thing that people also don't realise... when we see a supernova happen where that star was 400 million light years away... What we're seeing is what that star looked like 400 million years ago. Conversely, that means any planet (for the sake of an example: 100 million light years away) that can support and does end up with humanoid intelligent life... can be looking towards our neck of the woods and only see what was looked like 100 million years ago. We're not going to see signs of intelligent life from them, nor are they really going to see it from us. And technology that was strong enough to have radio waves escape into outer space has only existed for about 60 years.
In the event that we're not alone in this universe, we effectively are... just on the account of the incredible vastness of space itself.
these 'beams' would essentially be light right? also these photon torpedos would essentially be light too right? you know being photons and all. and so the speed of light is? well lightspeed. so firing these devastatingly powerful light weapons at beyond lightspeed would have what effect? would it be like a sonic boom on steroids vaporising anything behind the ignition source ie the spacecraft? lol.
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Actually, i'm not sure if I recall the movie right but if you use star trek physics to explain this you end up with basically pointing out that the torpedo was fired late in the action. This was intentional so that the asteroid could enter the warp bubble created by the engines wherein nothing is really moving faster than light and it's more like just shooting a rock in front of you. If you turn off the deflector so as not to alter it's path and pull the shields in to a closer proximity, you should be able to blast the rock and use the shields as a form of deflector to bounce the objects around you and out of the warp field without harming the ship.
For what it's worth, I still think we'll be using the singularity drives like the Romulans do. We need to create the gravity well necessary to bounce off the Terminus point and it's particle acceleration field to get enough blast to bounce to the other side of the universe at "warp" speeds
Hamish Campbell
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This terrible thread doesn't do this wonderful subject any justice. It started with a guy who couldn't tell his asshole from a black hole and now the guy who thinks exo-planet science is a "darwinist conspiracy" is arguing about star trek techno-babble bullshit.
lol jesus christ...
lol jesus christ...
Phoenix333
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No. The deflector array projects polarized gravitons through a subspace field. This keeps the deflector "beam" ahead of the ship even while the ship is at warp speeds because the particles that compose the beam are themselves contained within a projected warp field.
Actually a photon torpedo is not a pulse of light. It's physical torpedo with a matter/antimatter warhead. When a ship is traveling at warp speeds they bleed off a small amount of the warp field as they leave the proximity of the ship so the ship doesn't slam into them. This allows torpedoes to be launched forward of the ship while the ship is traveling at faster than light speeds, and for the torpedo to maintain those speeds for a practical duration of time. When the torpedo impacts, equal parts matter and antimatter are intermixed. The torpedoes contain 1.5 kilograms of deuterium and anti-deuterium, so the explosive yield is approximately 2.7x10^17 joules of energy. By comparison, the Tsar Bomba, the largest hydrogen bomb ever detonated at a yield of 50 megatons released 2.1x10^17 joules of energy, so a single torpedo detonation is equivalent to approximately 64.28 megatons.
Hamish Campbell
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Cool now tell us how the replicators work.
Exactly. That's why i made the comment about aliens would literally have to stumble upon us to visit us.
as for the whole Star Trek stuff. I like the series too, but it isn't reality. We can see how we could do most of the things, but not nearly at that scale, on a ship, independently powered for years at a time. Maybe one day, but not for a while. I remember reading one time that artificial gravity was the most amazing thing they supposedly invented on the show that we arn't sure how to replicate.
Phoenix333
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Eh... that's straying too far off topic.
Indeed. That's why the show was cast in the 23rd and 24th centuries. There are much more pragmatic issues to deal with in the mean time, such as keeping people from killing each other over natural resources, territory, religious and political ideologies, or plain old greed, envy, spite, etc.
It's all just fun entertainment, and I am gifted/cursed with an encyclopedic memory. I remember a lot of useless trivia and facts, but don't ask me what I did a week ago.
Ruoh
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I hope that is a lame attempt at trolling but I think you are serious, either way you need to be sterilized asap.
Our understanding of physics is not perfect nor absolute, so to say that other intelligent life are bound by the same laws of physics, is inaccurate.
Ruoh
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Negative. Physics as we know it is not a contstant across our galaxy, let alone our universe. Massive amounts of gravity will throw everything out the window that we know, currently.