Seems like with current technology it will take us 800,000 years to reach there. This is estimated to be even slower than a Naeem triple century.
Do you guys think we will ever make some kind of breakthrough in terms of engines that will enable us to travel faster than the speed of light? Something like the Alcubierre Drive to by pass the problem of relativity as proposed by the Mexican Scientist back in 1994?
I have always been fascinated by the vastness of the Universe and I think it would be amazing to see humanity travel to distant stars in my lifetime. What do you guys think? will it happen? bonus question..will we make contact with alien life?
Originally Posted by Zeeshan
elon musk tusk ra thakle dekha jabe
[cough] eta akta social experiment.. dekhi what interests people more.. free thinking women in burqa or science [cough.] Challenge is to get more than 5 responses and beat 90% of your threads
Originally Posted by Jadukor
Seems like with current technology it will take us 800,000 years to reach there. This is estimated to be even slower than a Naeem triple century.
Hawkings with nasa JPL are working to send a probe to alpha century, our nearest star neighbors. they are trying to use lasers to propel a very small craft. if functional this will achieve 10 to 20% speed of light. this will take 20 to 25 years to reach alpha century..very well in our lifetime.
Originally Posted by Night_wolf
Hawkings with nasa JPL are working to send a probe to alpha century, our nearest star neighbors. they are trying to use lasers to propel a very small craft. if functional this will achieve 10 to 20% speed of light. this will take 20 to 25 years to reach alpha century..very well in our lifetime.
although all of this is still in theory
Lets see if NASA survives Trump. I am more interested in warp drive (Like the one Starship enterprise has in Star Trek) that contracts space-time.
I am also excited by the telescope array China has built. Even if we cannot travel physically.. at least we can see or listen to galaxies far outside our reach. Would be nice to accidentally stumble upon an Alien radio program.
I do not think I will be able to witness interstellar travel during my lifetime, however I am excited about the prospect of finding lifeforms outside Earth. Scientists are already looking for ways to explore the depth of Jupiter's moon Europa which consists of vast oceans of liquid water (the constant gravitational pull and push keeps the depth of moon nice and warm). Life-form in Europa is a huge possibility.
Although not impossible but extremely improbable that we will ever achieve speed even quarter to the light speed. Solar sails and Ion drive (as night wolf mentioned) is probably the best we can do. And warping space and time is a very distant dream for now, even to theoretically create and manage to open such a portal would require exotic energy and masses.
The thing that fascinates me more than Space however is Quantum physics and mainly the phenomenon called "spooky action at a distance" , if science manages to fully understand this phenomenon than we can atleast communicate over large distance instantaneously (faster than speed of light).
I do not think I will be able to witness interstellar travel during my lifetime, however I am excited about the prospect of finding lifeforms outside Earth. Scientists are already looking for ways to explore the depth of Jupiter's moon Europa which consists of vast oceans of liquid water (the constant gravitational pull and push keeps the depth of moon nice and warm). Life-form in Europa is a huge possibility.
Although not impossible but extremely improbable that we will ever achieve speed even quarter to the light speed. Solar sails and Ion drive (as night wolf mentioned) is probably the best we can do. And warping space and time is a very distant dream for now, even to theoretically create and manage to open such a portal would require exotic energy and masses.
The thing that fascinates me more than Space however is Quantum physics and mainly the phenomenon called "spooky action at a distance" , if science manages to fully understand this phenomenon than we can atleast communicate over large distance instantaneously (faster than speed of light).
Great Thread indeed..sadly this wont get the same amount of replies as the burqa one.
Anyways Europa is a great prospect for life outside our planet. another one I am really excited about is Triton, neptune's moon. apart from earth Triton is the only solar body in our solar system to have a thick atmosphere. although being so far away from sun its impossible for Triton to have liquid water. But because of the temperature and atmosphere in Triton liquid methane is present. can there be a liquid methane base life form present there?. Biology works in many different ways. Is it necessary for life to have water?, earth based lifeforms may be..who can say for other planets as well..
Originally Posted by Night_wolf
Great Thread indeed..sadly this wont get the same amount of replies as the burqa one.
Anyways Europa is a great prospect for life outside our planet. another one I am really excited about is Triton, neptune's moon. apart from earth Triton is the only solar body in our solar system to have a thick atmosphere. although being so far away from sun its impossible for Triton to have liquid water. But because of the temperature and atmosphere in Triton liquid methane is present. can there be a liquid methane base life form present there?. Biology works in many different ways. Is it necessary for life to have water?, earth based lifeforms may be..who can say for other planets as well..
You are right, for life to form, water might not be the only source (although liquid is a must) and I do not believe in Silicon based life, since carbon based can form a lot more complex chains. Scientist as a result love to study the extremophiles.
btw, I think you meant Titan (saturn moon) and not Triton (moon of neptune).
I said not in my lifetime because we have landed on moon more than 50 years ago. Since then all the other facets of technology have moved "light years" but space exploration only remained a fascination.
NASA will have serious budget issues under the new administration. The hope now lies with private entrepreneurs and maybe China (not sure how advanced their space programs are).
Mars may be the most viable option. I would like to see a manned mission to the red planet.
Originally Posted by tonmoy.dhaka
You are right, for life to form, water might not be the only source (although liquid is a must) and I do not believe in Silicon based life, since carbon based can form a lot more complex chains. Scientist as a result love to study the extremophiles.
btw, I think you meant Titan (saturn moon) and not Triton (moon of neptune).
Originally Posted by mufi_02
Don't think anything will happen in our lifetime. Space exploration and fascination came to a halt after the end of Cold War.
Once in a while there will be some new "discoveries" but then you won't hear about it again.
This is not true at all.
Manned mission to moon and beyond has stopped but everything else has been going at a faster pace. There are more eyes on space now than any other time in history.
We have multiple space based telescopes, some like hubble is famous but there are also others that scan with spectrum that is not visible to the human eye. Infra-red telescope played a major role in determining the presence of super massive black holes in the center of milky way (our galaxy)
Discovering Exo-planets (planets beyond our solar system) was a distant dream once, now hundreds are discovered everyday with the help of telescope that are super-sensitive to the presence and absence of light (since they rely on transit method for the discovery).
Initially scientist relied on existence of exoplanet based on the gravitational effect the planet had to its parent star. That method works only for super-sized planets (gas giants like Jupiter) that are super close to the star. But now we are finding earth like planets near the Goldi-lock zones. (may be habitable)
Study of light: light can be both a particle and a wave. even If a human being theoretically were to travel at the speed of light, it would still take over a 10000 years minimum to get to a habitable place or those earth like planets which is way beyond the lifespan of an average human being. It's still a very fascinating discovery though!
Originally Posted by Rifat
Study of light: light can be both a particle and a wave. even If a human being theoretically were to travel at the speed of light, it would still take over a 10000 years minimum to get to a habitable place or those earth like planets which is way beyond the lifespan of an average human being. It's still a very fascinating discovery though!
Not true...
Hypothetically speaking If a man travels at the speed of light (ignoring the infinite mass), that person would experience no time. In layman's term, he would not age even a second when he reaches another star or galaxy!!
From the perspective of an observer "X" on earth, he (x) would have aged the time taken for the person travelling at light speed to reach that destination. It is fascinating and not intuitive. But I hope I was able to explain it. The math is too complicated for a forum discussion.
Originally Posted by tonmoy.dhaka
Not true...
Hypothetically speaking If a man travels at the speed of light (ignoring the infinite mass), that person would experience no time. In layman's term, he would not age even a second when he reaches another star or galaxy!!
From the perspective of an observer "X" on earth, he (x) would have aged the time taken for the person travelling at light speed to reach that destination. It is fascinating and not intuitive. But I hope I was able to explain it. The math is too complicated for a forum discussion.
You are talking about Einstein's theory of Relativity. There are two types: General and Special.
yes, according to the theory time slows down for an object as the object approaches the speed of light. However, do we take into account if it was possible for a human traveling at that speed that our bodies would be about to sustain itself traveling at that speed? the math you are talking about is quantum mechanics. (Mathematics beyond Linear Algebra and Abstract Algebra, Differential equations)
To be clear. Time is relative and not linear.
My clock is different from your clock and that is different from another clock in another part of the universe. Time is experienced differently by different people based on their position in space (in other words gravity impacts time) and Speed.
Time is not linear and hence "Genesis in old and new testament" is a joke (if the words are to be interpreted in a literal sense).
Originally Posted by Rifat
You are talking about Einstein's theory of Relativity. There are two types: General and Special.
yes, according to the theory time slows down for an object as the object approaches the speed of light. However, do we take into account if it was possible for a human traveling at that speed that our bodies would be about to sustain itself traveling at that speed? the math you are talking about is quantum mechanics. (Mathematics beyond Linear Algebra and Abstract Algebra, Differential equations)
I said "hypothetically", and anything with any mass will never be able to attain the speed of light since by e=mc squared ( You need infinite energy and your mass will be infinite before you attain that speed).
Not sure about our body!! I am guessing if mankind is so advanced as to accomplish 99.99% of the speed of light, they can also build a suit so that humans can survive .
Originally Posted by Night_wolf
Great Thread indeed..sadly this wont get the same amount of replies as the burqa one....
That has a direct relationship to the number of uneducated posts in each thread.
You will find very little in this thread. So there wouldn't be much to argue. Post like "Yeah, I agree" and nothing else is not welcomed either.
+++
For the thread, not in our lifetime.
We don't have to reach the speed of light as well. Traveling 10% at the speed of light would be an amazing feet in itself.
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Mufi miya challu maal. He is right but at first he made it sound like we'd be able to hitch a flight to the nearest star soon if NASA tried a little harder.
It's almost impossible to predict how far space technology will advance in our lifetime, but Confucius didn't say "If you shoot for the stars and hit the moon, it's ok" for nothing. I think space technology is about to get a serious boost in the next 5-10 years. I'm sure anyone posting on this thread would know, 15 years ago Elon Musk founded SpaceX as a hobby project. As recently as few years ago they were only getting small government contracts to build space shuttle components and help NASA solve some problems. While working with them, NASA realized SpaceX was the real deal and much closer to solving the whole puzzle itself, which is to commercially fly humans into the orbit. And they did the right thing of awarding them a 2+ billion dollar contract. This is the single largest contract in the history of NASA. SpaceX already has the technology to send people into space, they're just working on perfecting it and making it more cost effective. They currently charge $50-$60 million per launch which is less than 25% of the cost of it's American competitors. The goal is to get the cost down to 10% of that to make it commercially viable. They have even come up with a plan for that, which is to reuse their spaceships instead of dumping them after one flight.
Once this goal is achieved I think the space travel industry will take off in no time. Most people who can afford space travel will want to experience it. There will be trillions to be made. Companies from around the globe will start competing to get a piece of the pie. They'll have the incentive to invest billions in R&D which will lead to new break-through technologies.
My goal wasn't to bring you guys back from Alfa Centauri to the moon , but I think at that point we'll have a better idea of how far space technology can advance in our lifetime.
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Originally Posted by tonmoy.dhaka
Not true...
Hypothetically speaking If a man travels at the speed of light (ignoring the infinite mass), that person would experience no time. In layman's term, he would not age even a second when he reaches another star or galaxy!!
From the perspective of an observer "X" on earth, he (x) would have aged the time taken for the person travelling at light speed to reach that destination. It is fascinating and not intuitive. But I hope I was able to explain it. The math is too complicated for a forum discussion.
I never quite understood this. Light has a finite speed.. and speed is distance divided by time so it should take time for even light itself to get somewhere. Like how it takes 8 minutes for sunlight to reach earth. But you are right I watched and Neil Degrasse Tyson video where he said the same thing about time being zero for the photon and the math is too complicated.
This is why warp drives i believe are the way to circumvent the problems of relativity.
In a warp drive the spaceship simply expands space behind it and contracts space in front of it to bring things closer while remaining stationary itself. To me that sounds like the next gen engine we would need. Alcubierre has already done the math for this.
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Originally Posted by Jadukor
I never quite understood this. Light has a finite speed.. and speed is distance divided by time so it should take time for even light itself to get somewhere. Like how it takes 8 minutes for sunlight to reach earth. But you are right I watched and Neil Degrasse Tyson video where he said the same thing about time being zero for the photon and the math is too complicated.
This is why warp drives i believe are the way to circumvent the problems of relativity.
In a warp drive the spaceship simply expands space behind it and contracts space in front of it to bring things closer while remaining stationary itself. To me that sounds like the next gen engine we would need. Alcubierre has already done the math for this.
You are thinking in terms of Newtonian physics where time is linear and same for everyone everywhere.
In reality time and space is a single entity and they both work together and one impacts the other.
Another easy way to think about it,
Light speed is a universal constant. So Lets say you are running at 5km per hour with a torch light parallel to the direction of your travel. The speed light from the torch will NOT be light-speed(c) + 5kmph, it will still be only C.
Similarly for an observer from the opposite end driving towards you at 100kmph will not see light speed from your torch decrease by 100kmph. From his relative point it will still be C. Hence something must give, and it is "time" that gives since light speed is an universal constant.
Alcubierre warp drive is brilliant except the fact that it relies on exotic masses and energy (things which for all practical purpose are not available), but a brilliant idea none the less.