The Physics That Makes Interstellar Travel IMPOSSIBLE
- Thread starter Grumpy
- Start date
Grumpy
Well-Known Member
Suppose I give you my notes and you misunderstand them. You go around telling people that penguins are six feet tall and legally classified as poultry in Nebraska—suddenly I’m getting phone calls. No thank you.
Ok.
We are all doomed.
And Penguins can up to 4 feet tall.
King Penguins? My dad was in both the Artica's and mentioned them. I could be wrong.
Grumpy
Well-Known Member
Fantastic movie, seen it bunches of times, understood some but not all.
Same. Understood a bit more each time. 1st time thru I was
He's the subject of my absolutely favorite book, which I have lent out many times - sometimes - to never see it again only to buy another.
"Surely You're Joking, Mr, Feynmann!". I have since read a few of his other autobiographical books and there was even a movie made about his life as part of the Manhattan Project, starring Matthew Broderick -"Infinity". Absolutely fascinatng man.
I've previously referenced my most favorite of his lectures - https://calteches.library.caltech.edu/51/2/CargoCult.htm
Arctici?
Squiddie
Active Member
It's impossible, outside the bounds of what we think we know as possibility.
In only the span of 100 years we have gone from thinking that it was an impossibility for lighter-than-air travel to exist, to readily being able to put people on a different celestial body if deemed necessary.
If there is a hyper-advanced civilization somewhere out in the universe, they would surely have a much better understanding of the possibilities and impossibilities of the universe than our already quite expansive knowledge. In a seemingly infinite universe, there are infinite possibilities.
In only the span of 100 years we have gone from thinking that it was an impossibility for lighter-than-air travel to exist, to readily being able to put people on a different celestial body if deemed necessary.
If there is a hyper-advanced civilization somewhere out in the universe, they would surely have a much better understanding of the possibilities and impossibilities of the universe than our already quite expansive knowledge. In a seemingly infinite universe, there are infinite possibilities.
We need only watch insects and birds to know that flight is possible - it's just been a challenge to figure out the science until that point.
But the science also says that the speed of light is a limit and with the universe spanning light YEARS, it's damned close to impossible to make the trip.
There are - ways - around it. Well not really but - from the point of view of a traveler going CLOSE to the speed of light, time slows down. So if it were possible to approach the speed of light, the time observed for the traveler would be short. You could make it to Proxima Centauri but it's a one way trip - the return trip to Earth, if you could would place you centuries into the future.
Unless someone wants to work out the math - I don't see how we could ever hope to POWER a ship to make those distances and still move the mass needed to get there. Time dilates with the speed of light - but relative MASS *increases*. Which means to move AT the speed of light, you would need to move an infinite mass. For photons, they're massless - not a problem for photons. But for particles and stuff WITH mass - yeah it poses a problem.
So I don't even see the possibility of getting CLOSE to the speed of light. The best we're going to do is stay in our solar system. And maybe launch our DNA around the universe like dandelions spreading seeds.
Kyle
Beloved Misanthrope
that’s exactly what Captain Kirk was doing.
I'm probably in the minority here, but I think speed faster than light is achievable. I don't necessarily believe in the "infinite mass at the speed of light" thing (Einstein's E=MC**2 is being challenged all the time). It wasn't that many years ago that it wasn't possible to break the sound barrier. Before that, going faster than 30mph would boil your blood. We don't know what we don't know.
ALERT!! ahead:Your points are all valid considering man knows EVERYTHING there is to know about science. Nothing new will ever be discovered again.
End
alert.You may now give an intelligent response.
DPAT
Active Member
Light has mass, it's just the lowest mass thing we know of, and therefore the fastest traveling thing we know of. It's possible something can travel faster, but we certainly cannot, unless someone's worked out how to turn us into something faster than light and then reverse that conversion.
Kyle
Beloved Misanthrope
that’s easy
They turn everyone into a copy of my nephew Z when there’s only one Klondike bar left in their freezer.
That’s the fastest thing in the universe.