The Universe is Lame
 

We are billions of light years away from some stars. That means that if I had a sweet rocketship that could travel at the speed of light, it would still take me billions of years to get there. And if THAT wasn't bad enough, the stupid universe is expanding. So as I travel, the distance is getting GREATER STILL. How much is it expanding? It is expanding at a speed such that an object 4 billion light years away this instant would potentially take 13 billion years to get to travelling at the speed of light. So ok fine- there are places in the universe that we can never get to.

What about the closest stuff?

The closest star system to the Sun is the Alpha Centauri system. Of the three stars in the system Proxima Centauri is the nearest star. It is 4.22 light years away. The fastest space probe we've sent up, the Voyager 1, travels at 39,000mph. If this was sent to Proxima Centauri, it would take 17,000 years to get there.

Some stuff to read:

http://www.nasa.gov/centers/glenn/research/warp/ipspaper.html

http://www.physorg.com/news8817.html

These articles almost make you feel excited that interstellar travel might be possible, but I call shenanigans on the whole thing. I don't think its going to be happening in the next 500 years, which is a bunch of garbage. When I watched sci-fi growing up in the 80s, all of the space movies were set in the early 2000s. I thought I was going to be an intergalactic pirate or something. Now I am instead in a cubicle working as an analyst, driving a Honda. What gives?

What if Porsche got into space vehicles. Hmmmmmm. :)

I blame it all on cheap oil.

The only hope is whomever/whatever is out there might find us.

Because we'd rather fight each other over ridiculousness like religion and oil, while at the same time killing this planet, you may as well forget about us even making it to Mars in our lifetime, much less Proxima Centauri. :(

If they're out there, and they've found us, they probably watch us on TV for their own amusement and don't plan to help us out at all.

Why would anyone bother trying to reach some place that probably died out or blew up long before its light reached the Earth? Plenty of stuff we can see disappeared long ago, but its light is just now, relatively speaking, getting to us. If Alpha Centauri went dark in our telescopes tomorrow, that means it actually happened over four years ago. If we were able to travel there, imagine the four year time delay in communication back to the Earth! There has to be some loophole in quantum physics that allows travel, if not faster than the speed of light, at least some trap door in space/time for getting to those faraway places. I doubt any of us will live to see it, but it's cool to think about.

But I have read a theory that eventually the universe will quit expanding and then collapse. So we can just sit here in our barcaloungers and wait for them to come to us!

Who knows? You do need to know their motives though. Problem is the motives could be infinite.

Read some of the stuff I linked- there's some information on this. Its a bunch of theoretical hoosafudge, but its the only plausible way for any of this to ever happen.

Correct. I think what has to happen is one needs to suspend their idea of traditional space travel.

Black holes might be the way to do this.

You would have to stop on the Moon to adjust the valves and change the oil.

Rammstein, the 21st century concept of space travel is all wrong.

See our problem is that we are made of water and not anti-freeze so when temps get cold (ie like in space) the water crystallizes, expands and ruptures everything.

What's this have to do with space you ask, well 17,000 years is an awful long time, you couldn't keep anything "powered" to keep your payload (ie humans) warm enough. Best case, you take your best aim, fire your UFO at as close to the speed of light as possible, shut everything down and go into a deep freeze, until you get close enough to something like a Sun to warm up again.

So really space travel as more to do with the ability to thaw a 0 kelvin human, or perhaps semi-human adapted to be frozen.

Now where'd I put that worm hole?......

I actually saw something sort of kind of related to this discussion.....
http://www.spikedhumor.com/articles/138855/Ted_Talks_Earth_in_it_s_Final_Century.html
It's crazy to think that if we are half way through in the timeline of our galaxies lifespan, starting life as simple single cell organisms to evolve to what we are today, what will the human race be in another 2.5-3 billion years?

A very, very distant memory. SmileWavy

I think I have come up with a solution. A theory if you will. Let's assume that light moves in a wave as shown in the blue line in my diagram. We can make our rocket go in a straight line from one point to the other. Voila! We have changed the light-time continuum. Of course my theory needs a bit of refinement. :D



http://forums.pelicanparts.com/uploa...1200433891.jpg

Silly though that may be, its the basic premise of warping the space-time continuum I think.

Shenanigans. SHENANIGANS!!!

Don't be trying to steal my idea! :D

Let's put this in perspective....

That means that...
our whole solar system...
could be, like...
one tiny atom in the fingernail
of some other giant being.

This is too much!

That means...

one tiny atom in my fingernail could be--
-Could be one little...
tiny universe.

Could l buy some pot from you?

The renowned gentleman can speak for himself...

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e=mc^2 big problem is that the faster an object, like a spaceship must travel, to anything remotely approaching light speed, it's mass begins to approach infinity. by definition here, anything moving at the speed of light then must have 'zero mass' because we just can't have 'infinite mass'. only pure energy/zero mass may move at the speed of light..guess that's why we only observe light to do so. :) the expansion of the universe is indeed great..actually, at the time of the 'big bang' it was expanding faster than light. that's why there are some parts of our universe still dark..light still hasn't had enough time to 'catch up 'to those regions. the expansion has since slowed down. good questions remain..will the universe continue to expand 'forever'...or will it reach a point and begin to retract? as far as space travel, even sub-light speeds pose problems as the creators of star trek the next generation had to address for those trekkies bent upon having certain questions answered. for example, how would we survive the great forces of acceleration in such a spaceship even at sub-light speeds, relatively near the speed of light? they created mythical 'inertial dampeners' for this particular problem. the speed that our rockets fly in the vacuum of our space are generally limited to speed to which they obtain blasting free from our atmosphere and the gravity of the earth. once free, and traveling with zero existence in the vacuum of space, we'd need some kind of power, which would permit a slow enough acceleration to these much higher sub-light speeds without killing us via inertial forces. kinda think we'll be long dead by the time this problem gets worked out..and what to do about the time-dilation effects these astronauts would be dealing with..whether they'd have a familiar home in which to return. i spent three years exhaustively researching and writing a fiction novel based upon this science for which i'm still seeking an agent. any agents, feel free to contact me. i almost had one a couple years ago, but i've been too distracted to get back to work selling the idea. the book's central hook deals with the probability of the existence of parallel/near parallel universes.

Your book sounds interesting, but you'll have to make it into a movie for me. Reading is hard.

there are many more dimensions than 3.

i've been considering writing a screenplay version, but depression has had me not feeling quite up to the task. it would require a great deal of 'energy' from me - i'd probably have to approach infinite mass to do so! :D anyway, i've posted the preface to the manuscript before in similar threads. here it is again. forgive the loss of proper formatting from copy/paste:

Preface

This is an excursion through arguably the most absorbing and hotly debated topic in the sciences of fundamental physics and cosmology, beginning with the question of ‘why is there something, rather than nothing’? In the context of a story, which follows the lives of its characters, the reader will experience a fictional, yet fairly comprehensive examination of the boldest prediction in science today – the existence of parallel universes.
Why have so many of the greatest minds of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries felt so compelled to reach the conclusion that we are in fact ‘not alone’? In an even more bizarre twist…‘we are the other people out there…’
The curiosity that this story generates brings us all to bear on the question of just what is the ‘nature of reality’ and how every single one of us must ultimately reconcile the even greater mystery between ‘faith and reason’. Do we simply exist by chance, as some would argue, or are we in fact the fortunate recipients of a loving, benevolent God with the omnipotent capacity to form infinitely satisfying and personal relationships with his creation? Whichever the case may be, one thing is certain…mankind thirsts for this answer.
Recorded history has traced our path on this journey for truth. Millenniums past, we stared towards the heavens and considered our position in the vast cosmos. For thousands of years, we believed that the Earth was the center of ‘all that is’ – the universe. Only in recent centuries has man evolved the tools to discover that this belief was, in fact, false. Other worlds were soon seen through the lens of Galileo’s mighty telescope, as it was quickly determined that perhaps it was in actuality the ‘Sun’ that should be the center of all things…at least until we saw deeper…
As humanity continued to probe the ‘world of the very large’, even more of these suns were discovered. This forced the unsettling conclusion that most all of the tiny ‘points of light’ in the night sky that we call ‘stars’…were simply other suns. It was uncovered that we live in a galaxy populated with literally billions of suns, which we call stars. Imagine the shock and disorientation when we discovered that not only was the sun, which we orbit not only as common as the ordinary sand grain, but in addition lacks any special prominence whatsoever in our own ‘spiral home’ that we call the Milky Way.
Our little solar system is nothing but a miniscule speck far out on a single spoke of a giant wheel. In the interim, as new tools and technology continued to grow, so did the apparent size and age of the visible universe. Its age today has been closely approximated to 13.8 billion years. Its size…? Well, we can see literally billions of galaxies, filled with billions of common little stars such as our own…
As our minds continued to whirl from these revelations, other men asked a completely different question. Now that we’d begun to conceptualize just ‘how big’ the universe is and how truly ‘insignificant’ we are…we began to wonder. In reality, just how ‘small’ can small be? When we begin to consider the limit of the macro scales of the world, by fascinating necessity we must ultimately consider the same limits at the micro scales of existence.
Arguably, the two greatest innovations in physics of our generation are the inventions of General Relativity and Quantum Mechanics. No two other theories explain so much of the nature of reality as we experience it. Combined, this pair of explanations describes the universe across a staggering 40 orders of magnitude. Interestingly, as things become infinitely small or infinitely large a new theoretical description is required. Unfortunately, these two theories don’t play well together…
Current revolutions in resolving this dilemma have suggested new approaches to solving this fundamental ‘behavior problem’ by changing the way in which we’ve traditionally viewed reality, in particular on the smallest scales. The language involved has required a continual evolution in the science of mathematics - traditionally the words, formulas and equations that most elegantly define the fundamental properties of the universe. Simpler notions of time and space are no longer adequate to the task as we begin to probe the fantastic worlds of ‘extra-dimensional geometry’ and ‘imaginary time’.
In an effort to combine the ideas contained within General Relativity and Quantum Mechanics, new theories have emerged and been given names such as Supersymmetry, Super Gravity, String Theory, Superstring Theory, M-Theory and others. From these novel ways of explaining the nature of reality, one very startling implication borrowed from the Uncertainty Principle in Quantum Mechanics continues to arise - parallel universes should exist…
For over two millennia, fundamental physics has been based on the ‘round ball’ concept - technically the geometric point particle. This idea and electromagnetism put Man on the moon, created computers and all of the other conveniences of modern technologies. But these same balls bounced us straight into a conflict between General Relativity and Quantum Mechanics.
Heisenberg’s bizarre quantum uncertainty introduced a dumbfounding ‘fuzziness’ into physics. Contemporary theories, built currently through the often unpopular strategy of purely mathematical reasoning, seek to replace ‘point’ particles with ‘string’ particles in which every unique, different particle in nature corresponds to nothing more than simply different vibration frequencies.
By definition, the use of point particles as the basic building-block of matter, compresses everything down to an infinitely-small size, infinitely-hot temperature, which becomes an obstacle. The use of a string softens out the mathematically problematic ‘infinities’ into something finite…the resultant size and temperature is still unfathomably small and inconceivably hot, but not infinite.
Vibrating strings cause the whole of spacetime itself to become fuzzy. The combination of puzzling ‘relativistic and quantum effects’, which occur at both the macro and microscopic limits of reality, causes the strengths of the four fundamental forces of nature to suddenly vary. It does appear, however, that they should unify at some extremely high energy.
There are two ways to probe high energies. One of them is the original, primordial experiment - the birth of the universe – while the other is to increase the energies of particle accelerators. The Large Hadron Collider accelerator, which is scheduled to be completed in about five years, could provide hungrily-awaited experimental evidence…but will it be powerful enough? Where does the next frontier lie…?
In particular, in All That Is Seen And Unseen, two persons encounter a phenomenon, which causes a ‘transition effect’ to occur that transports them from their own familiar place and time to another ‘near parallel’ if somewhat anachronistic world. Faced with this frightening and ghostly ‘similar yet different’ reality, they begin to face the issues that a confrontation with such mystery would be expected to engender. Faced with no other alternative but to go forward with their lives, no choice remains but to attempt to cope…while they begin to ask questions and look for answers.
This manuscript assumes a reader’s above average interest or background in some of the most difficult to grasp and challenging aspects of the natural sciences. A large proportion of the writing has included integration of the broad history and foundations of modern physics. Every effort was made to remove specific references to mathematical formulae, with the exception of Newton’s historic gravitational inverse square law and Einstein’s famous equation, which states the equivalency of matter and energy as perhaps the sole exceptions.
The story, thus, is grounded in real science - not science fiction. However, to date there is no verifiable evidence available that can bear out real scenarios that could produce actual ‘communication’ with parallel universes; certainly no amount of thoughtful research on my part over the past three years was able to yield an exhaustive or satisfactory explanation for the passage of just such an event. So, ultimately, the following 140,000 words do indeed represent a work of fiction. I hope it makes you wonder…and I hope you enjoy the journey.
Ryan Vestal

If I recall correctly, there were two indepenent studies done on the rate of our expanding universe. Both studies came to the same surprising conclusion. That the universe is expanding at continuing greater speeds. That the expansion of our universe is still accelerating.

Einstein thought that if we looked far enough into space we would see - the back of our own heads.
So why would you want to travel a billion years only to discover your own sorry a** ?

I heart the universe

My brain struggles with understanding the 3.

I thought the latest theory isn't that the universe is expending quicker, but time is slowing down and might stop all together.

I look at it this way, The more we look at it, the more Einstein's physics break down in smaller ways. It is through these loopholes we might be able to slip through and do some intersteller travel.

Another alternative is to just extend the human live to a couple of thousand years. If your going to live 10 thousand years, spending 8 years hopping over to Alpha Centauri might not seem like a problem.

Why even bother going to Alpha Centauri? We can't land on a star. Even visiting Mercury here is a very dicey mission with a 1300 deg. temp. shift between day and night.

I'm reminded of Jerry Seinfeld's joke. If aliens from outer space are watching us and see us picking up dog poop behind our dogs, they're gonna think the dogs rule the Earth and are our masters.

Humm, also before we conquer the universe we first have to conquer space fungus.
http://www.space.com/news/spacestation/space_fungus_000727.html

Mir got eaten alive by that stuff...

LMAO

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/15/science/15brain.html?em&ex=1200546000&en=3d0d451cc8672382& ei=5087%0A

What will they think of next ?

And then again who knows...... ?

http://www.badmovies.org/multimedia/moviesl/brainarous1.mpg


http://forums.pelicanparts.com/uploa...1200449954.jpg

A little spice melange will shorten intergalactic trips right up.

The Ixians need to fire up the axlotl tanks.

The universe within is more obtainable and far more interesting IMO

What the hell do you think I'm trying to get away from?

You could always try the lateral abyss...

I'm shocked that a NASA scientist (In the link rammstein provided) would say that a rocket needs to go faster than the speed of light to travel the distances required to get around the universe. You can do it while moving slower than light.

One can theoretically get a to star one-billion light-years away in just one year, as measured on the rocket's clock, if the rocket goes fast enough. The equation to show this is similar to the Pythagorean theorem:

interval^2=(time separation^2) - (space separation^2)

where:
'interval' is the time it takes to get across spacetime, as measured on the rocket's clock.
'time separation' is the time it takes the object of interest to travel the specified distance, using an earth clock.
'space separation' is the specified distance, with light speed as the yard stick, using an earth clock.

Express space separation in time units. (After all, isn't a light-year a distance expressed in time units?) Then the answer will be in time units. (The space separation is 1-billion light years, and for a beam of light, it is equivalent to 1-billion years of time. Another way to look at it: If light travels 300,000,000 meters per second, then a distance of 300,000,000 meters can also be called one light-second.)

If we go almost the speed of light, it might take one-billion-and-one years to get to a star one-billion light-years away, AS MEASURED ON AN EARTH CLOCK. This would be 0.999999999 light speed. Of course, it takes light exactly one-billion years to get to the star, also as measured on an earth clock. The traveler on the spaceship would not be using the earth clock, though. Plugging in the numbers into the equation, we get:

interval^2=1,000,000,001years^2-1,000,000,000years^2

= 44,721 years

So it only takes our astronaut 44,721 of his years to go 1-billion light-years. OK, so he's got to go a little faster. But you get the idea. You don't need to go faster than light. What was that NASA guy thinking?

I'm confident that a number of us PPOT posters can spare the 44,721 years it takes to make that trip. :)