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Just 120 Trillion Miles From Home
by Dennis Overbye
Reposted from the NYTimes:
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/29/weekinreview/22basicB.html?ref=science
How soon till we can get to the Goldilocks planet? Don't cash in your frequent flier miles yet.
Astronomers announced last week that they had found what might be the first habitable planet outside the solar system. Known poetically as Gliese 581c, the new planet is only five times as massive as the Earth and inhabits a sweet zone around a dim red star in Libra where it is neither too hot nor too cold for liquid water. The star and its retinue of planets are only 20 light years away. "We could go there," enthused Dimitar Sasselov, an astronomer at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, noting that 20 light years is next door in a galaxy 100,000 light years across. But he was speaking for the very, very long term. However near cosmically, the Gliese planet is still about 120 trillion miles away. Voyager 1, now leaving the solar system at a speed of about 39,000 miles per hour, would need more than 300,000 years to travel that far.
Physicists and engineers point out, however, that it is possible to attain much higher speeds with spacecraft that undergo a gentler but steady acceleration throughout the trip, rather than getting a short violent boost at the beginning like Voyager and current rockets do. Lawrence Krauss, a physicist at Case Western Reserve University, and author of "The Physics of Star Trek," said that a ship that could maintain an acceleration equivalent to the gravity felt on Earth would attain a velocity of half the speed of light in three months.
The technology for that much oomph is nowhere in sight, but NASA has experimented with gentler versions like solar sails, in which the spacecraft is propelled by sunlight, or ion drives, pioneered on a spacecraft named Deep Space 1, which visited a comet in 2001, in which high-energy particles do the propelling. This year a new spacecraft, Dawn, will use ion propulsion to begin a cruise around the asteroid belt. But even ion drives have to carry prohibitive amounts of fuel to reach the stars, said Marc Rayman of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, and Dawn's project system engineer.
It would take Dawn 10,000 days and 5,000 pounds of propellant to get up to 150,000 miles per hour, which is only .02 percent of the speed of light, "which is nothing," said Dr. Rayman.
"That's an illustration of how daunting this travel is," he said. "The distances are vast, the challenges are extraordinary."
"I don't have any doubt that humankind will eventually have the technology to send spacecraft that distance," he said, adding, "I have no idea how it will be done."
Dr. Sasselov said that in the long run, in order to survive planetary catastrophes, we would want to make the trip, by whatever means.
"We don't have to go next year or even in the next 20 years," Dr. Sasselov said. But eventually, he said, "if we figure out our human affairs down on here on Earth, we'll want to be moving along."
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/29/weekinreview/22basicB.html?ref=science
How soon till we can get to the Goldilocks planet? Don't cash in your frequent flier miles yet.
Astronomers announced last week that they had found what might be the first habitable planet outside the solar system. Known poetically as Gliese 581c, the new planet is only five times as massive as the Earth and inhabits a sweet zone around a dim red star in Libra where it is neither too hot nor too cold for liquid water. The star and its retinue of planets are only 20 light years away. "We could go there," enthused Dimitar Sasselov, an astronomer at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, noting that 20 light years is next door in a galaxy 100,000 light years across. But he was speaking for the very, very long term. However near cosmically, the Gliese planet is still about 120 trillion miles away. Voyager 1, now leaving the solar system at a speed of about 39,000 miles per hour, would need more than 300,000 years to travel that far.
Physicists and engineers point out, however, that it is possible to attain much higher speeds with spacecraft that undergo a gentler but steady acceleration throughout the trip, rather than getting a short violent boost at the beginning like Voyager and current rockets do. Lawrence Krauss, a physicist at Case Western Reserve University, and author of "The Physics of Star Trek," said that a ship that could maintain an acceleration equivalent to the gravity felt on Earth would attain a velocity of half the speed of light in three months.
The technology for that much oomph is nowhere in sight, but NASA has experimented with gentler versions like solar sails, in which the spacecraft is propelled by sunlight, or ion drives, pioneered on a spacecraft named Deep Space 1, which visited a comet in 2001, in which high-energy particles do the propelling. This year a new spacecraft, Dawn, will use ion propulsion to begin a cruise around the asteroid belt. But even ion drives have to carry prohibitive amounts of fuel to reach the stars, said Marc Rayman of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, and Dawn's project system engineer.
It would take Dawn 10,000 days and 5,000 pounds of propellant to get up to 150,000 miles per hour, which is only .02 percent of the speed of light, "which is nothing," said Dr. Rayman.
"That's an illustration of how daunting this travel is," he said. "The distances are vast, the challenges are extraordinary."
"I don't have any doubt that humankind will eventually have the technology to send spacecraft that distance," he said, adding, "I have no idea how it will be done."
Dr. Sasselov said that in the long run, in order to survive planetary catastrophes, we would want to make the trip, by whatever means.
"We don't have to go next year or even in the next 20 years," Dr. Sasselov said. But eventually, he said, "if we figure out our human affairs down on here on Earth, we'll want to be moving along."
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Posted: Monday, April 30, 2007 | PermalinkComments 1 - 44 of 44 |
Reload Comments | Back to Top | Page Numbers2. Comment #36076 by mortiz on April 30, 2007 at 6:17 am
The liklyhood is that as methods for looking into the cosmos improve we'll find other planets capable of sustaining life, one or two perhaps closer than Gliese.Other Comments by mortiz
3. Comment #36086 by Mango on April 30, 2007 at 6:51 am
Why don't scientists pay close attention to the dialog in Star Trek (especially TNG) to figure out how warp engines work and then invent them! Other Comments by Mango
4. Comment #36087 by ridelo on April 30, 2007 at 6:54 am
I'll wait for Rama!Other Comments by ridelo
5. Comment #36089 by Nigel Harris on April 30, 2007 at 6:58 am
Mortiz - I wouldn't get too excited about the idea of finding more watery planets closer than Gliese. Gliese is far, far, far closer to us than almost everything that exists. The region within 20 light-years of Earth represents only about one billionth of our own galaxy, let alone the rest of the universe! Within that one-billionth of the galaxy are just 131 stars.As for human beings ever visiting any of them, travelling even 20 light-years is mind-bogglingly beyond our capabilities. Not just practical capabilities but theoretically possible capabilities. Unless we have fundamentally misunderstood the rules of physics, there is essentially no chance that a living human being will ever set foot on any planet orbiting any sun other than our own. Unless, that is, the Flying Spaghetti Monster can take us there...
Other Comments by Nigel Harris
6. Comment #36090 by Slartibartfast on April 30, 2007 at 7:01 am
Another problem not mentioned in the article: you wouldn't merely have to attain sufficient speed and carry the appropriate amount of fuel to do so. You'd have to carry twice that amount to be able to brake the spacecraft again in time for arrival, otherwise it would simply zoom past its target. Also the necessary braking process would significantly prolong the journey time.So, I guess we really do need that warp drive soon... That Hawking chap said he was working on it, didn't he?
Other Comments by Slartibartfast
7. Comment #36092 by Absinthius on April 30, 2007 at 7:12 am
"Star Trekking, across the universeBoldly going forward, 'cause we can't find reverse"
something like that slarti? ;)
Other Comments by Absinthius
8. Comment #36095 by Slartibartfast on April 30, 2007 at 7:32 am
Yeah. Another motto might be "bringing peace and tranquility to habitable planets across the galaxy by crashing spacecrafts into them at half the speed of light". :-)Other Comments by Slartibartfast
9. Comment #36118 by Rtambree on April 30, 2007 at 8:17 am
On top of that, we'd have to survive the radiation of outer space - a lot of extremely heavy shielding, etc.Transport technology hasn't changed in years. The Boeing 747 took us from London to Sydney in the early 1970s. It still does today. You could even argue we're going backwards in terms of transit times:
1. Waiting queues at airports are longer.
2. Concord is retired.
3. Space Shuttle (circa late 70s tech) is retiring.
4. Current space program is to go to the moon again - something that was done in the 1960s and hasn't been done for 30+ years.
5. Increased traffic congestion in cities makes A-B speeds slower.
Telecommunications have far surpassed all predictions, but transport technology has failed all predictions.
Other Comments by Rtambree
10. Comment #36120 by ghostbuster on April 30, 2007 at 8:28 am
Here we're rolling in our imaginations on an inhabitable planet 120 trillion miles away while we're busy making this one uninhabitable. Go figure.Other Comments by ghostbuster
11. Comment #36121 by Laurence Winch-Furness on April 30, 2007 at 8:29 am
I have my own idea for how to get there, based on one of the designs outlined in Cosmos: The spacecraft looks like a giant umbrella. Effectvely, a huge curved dish is used to focus the particles of solar wind into a tank. The craft is placed at the larange point of Mercury, until it has filled it's "fuel tank." When ready, the charged particles are slowly released into the path of a high powered laser, or some other method of particle aceleration, which aclelerates them down a long ionised tube (ionised to the same charge as the particles so as to repel them away from the walls) the charged particles should reach near light speed and push the craft along, gradually building up speed to eventually reach a perceptible fraction of light speed. To slow down, the craft can turn itself around, and collect more particles from the solar wind of Glise itself. (It would probably have to compleate several eliptical orbits before braking sufficiently)
Other Comments by Laurence Winch-Furness
12. Comment #36132 by squinky on April 30, 2007 at 8:54 am
It bugs me that astronomers constantly blow smoke at the public about the colonization of space. Here is why humans will NEVER set foot on another planet:1) No propulsion system will ever get a spacecraft large enough to carry humans close to the speed of light. Mass increases to infinity as it approaches the speed of light thus it takes infinite energy to accelerate it.
2) If we COULD send astronauts to the closest Earth-like planet at near light speed (we can't), they would be long dead before they arrive (20 light years!).
3) Radiation destroys cells quickly in space. The longer you're there, the quicker you screw up your DNA. Worse are the effects of zero gravity on human physiology--your entire musculature atrophies VERY quickly. Just look at Russian cosmonauts who return in wheelchairs after 1 year in space.
Colonization is bullshit and always will be. Astronmers need to learn more biology. It also bugs me that Earthlings seem to conclude that Earth-bound problems will be solved when we colonize other places--no, they won't. We will simply export our prejudice, greed, lust, and other failings to the new place.
Other Comments by squinky
13. Comment #36133 by Devolution on April 30, 2007 at 8:54 am
Astronomers really have to start trying coming up with better names for planets. Gliese 581c? It's not a frieken hardware store part number! Other Comments by Devolution
14. Comment #36134 by Mark R on April 30, 2007 at 9:00 am
ghostbuster great point, People are already looking for a better place....forget heaven now they are thinking of another planet. I like the one we have here and do what i can to help it continue to support life. Why do we not invest tons of money in this planet to preserve it....so frustrating. People die from starvation and people over populate, what a mess.
Other Comments by Mark R
15. Comment #36135 by briancoughlanworldcitizen on April 30, 2007 at 9:09 am
Squinky what a dreadful lack of imagination. I have two words for you : Space Elevator.It's not going to happen in 20 years time, and we certainly need to be focusing on many other issues first. However, I'm confident it will happen eventually, I want it to happen.
Imagine if we are the only sentient species in the universe? It's crazy to keep all our eggs in one basket like this. One asteroid/rogue black hole/local supernova and it's hasta la vista baby. That shit happens, eventually.
Onward and upward!!! Never give up, never surrender!!!
Other Comments by briancoughlanworldcitizen
16. Comment #36139 by DavidMcC on April 30, 2007 at 9:16 am
Slartibartfast: 'Yeah. Another motto might be "bringing peace and tranquility to habitable planets across the galaxy by crashing spacecrafts into them at half the speed of light". :-)'Yes, an all-too-often overlooked aspect of the steady acceleration approach to space travel! In fact, wouldn't it be more likely to miss and go sailing past, never to be seen again? The only way out would be to use reverse thrust from the destination star, but that would obviously add a lot to the journey time.
Other Comments by DavidMcC
17. Comment #36141 by He'sAVeryNaughtyBoy on April 30, 2007 at 9:22 am
Squinky - while I agree that the colonization of other worlds is highly unlikely to ever happen (not saying that there's no chance it will), the time taken to get to those other planets shouldn't be a problem.Time is supposed to slow down the faster you get to the speed of light so for anyone making the voyage of 20 lightyears, if they travelled at half the speed of light, it would be 40 years for us on Earth but it would be substantialy less for those making the voyage. (Or at least that's the general idea I got from my very basic understanding of relativity and what I read from a book called the Sparrow - not sure how much was fact and how much was bastardised science).
Other Comments by He'sAVeryNaughtyBoy
18. Comment #36147 by steve99 on April 30, 2007 at 9:42 am
Squinky - people were saying exactly the same thing about high-speed train travel, about flying, and so on. Serious scientists last century even suggested that getting to the Moon was impossible, and gave apparently sound physical arguments why.I suggest you take a look at Clarke's Three Laws:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clarke's_three_laws
However, even with current technologies we can imagine at least the possibility of how to get human colonists (or their descendants) to nearby stars. As has been mentioned, a very high-power laser system could launch a 'solar sail' arrangement at a significant proportion of the speed of light, and with a sufficiently focussed beam could even be used for deceleration at the destination. There are many ways to provide shielding from cosmic rays - rock from an asteroid around a craft, or magnetic fields.
There is very good reason to colonise, and talk of preserving our planet is simplistic. Part of the normal cycle of events on our planet is mass extinction. There has been talk of diverting possible extinction-causing asteroids, but no technology we can even imagine could do anything about supervolcanoes or massive lava floods.
Thinking about colonisation of other planets both within and beyond our solar system is a rather good idea for the long-term survival of humankind.
Other Comments by steve99
19. Comment #36166 by Glacian on April 30, 2007 at 11:34 am
My suggestion is to develop powerful AI in computers, so that eventually computer-beings can surpass pitiful human biological limitations. By replacing ourselves with machines, which are superior (Matrix, Terminator, etc.), "we" (we'd be dead, only robots would exist at this point) would have a much easier time colonizing other planets. Then again, robots wouldn't need such specific environments for life as we do, being superior and all. They'd have a lot more options of places to colonize. Other Comments by Glacian
20. Comment #36168 by Laurence Winch-Furness on April 30, 2007 at 11:55 am
"It bugs me that astronomers constantly blow smoke at the public about the colonization of space. Here is why humans will NEVER set foot on another planet:1) No propulsion system will ever get a spacecraft large enough to carry humans close to the speed of light. Mass increases to infinity as it approaches the speed of light thus it takes infinite energy to accelerate it.
2) If we COULD send astronauts to the closest Earth-like planet at near light speed (we can't), they would be long dead before they arrive (20 light years!).
3) Radiation destroys cells quickly in space. The longer you're there, the quicker you screw up your DNA. Worse are the effects of zero gravity on human physiology--your entire musculature atrophies VERY quickly. Just look at Russian cosmonauts who return in wheelchairs after 1 year in space.
Colonization is bullshit and always will be. Astronmers need to learn more biology. It also bugs me that Earthlings seem to conclude that Earth-bound problems will be solved when we colonize other places--no, they won't. We will simply export our prejudice, greed, lust, and other failings to the new place."
Erm, artificial gravity, radiation sheilding, suspended animation anyone? While such technologies remain in the relm of science fiction at the moment, they are within our technological grasp. There's also a fair few technologies that could potentially acelerate a spacecraft to a perceptible fraction of the speed of light, as I aluded to above.
Other Comments by Laurence Winch-Furness
21. Comment #36190 by mortiz on April 30, 2007 at 12:48 pm
If we had a few more thousand years on our side we'd probably figure something out, however we'll deplete the Earth's natural resources long before then. It all depends on how much time is left on our clock.Other Comments by mortiz
22. Comment #36201 by Lamonte Cranston on April 30, 2007 at 1:15 pm
Could we at least blast some very hardy bacteria towards this inhabitable planet, which would eventually evolve into more complex life forms?Other Comments by Lamonte Cranston
23. Comment #36225 by Rtambree on April 30, 2007 at 2:36 pm
It'll be easier to adapt the human body to other environments than to adapt those environments to us.Downloadable intelligences in von Neumann probes?
Who knows? But the predictions of the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s have been overly optimistic? Where are Hotels in space? Holidays on the Moon? Three hour Sydney - London transit times? Paperless office? 10 hour working week?
Other Comments by Rtambree
24. Comment #36256 by Devolution on April 30, 2007 at 4:43 pm
Well it turns out the interstellar travel may not be as far off as we thought. Although this is still completely theoretical, it is an interesting advancement nonetheless. Check out this articlehttp://www.newscientist.com/channel/fundamentals/mg18925331.200-take-a-leap-into-hyperspace.html
Other Comments by Devolution
25. Comment #36259 by Yorker on April 30, 2007 at 4:53 pm
Overbye gives an even more pessimistic estimate of journey time than I gave in response to an earlier post on this subject, but it's important to keep looking; hopefully, one day it will become essential for us to abandon Earth or go extinct.As for warp drive, we already know how it works and it's just about the only way to shorten space travel, i.e. shorten the distances by bending. Star Trek simply ignores the problem of the vast amount of energy needed to create such a gravitational field, and makes no mention at all of the fact that any object reaching light-speed would have infinite mass. So I suspect that "warp factors" are not speed settings, but "bending degrees" since the Enterprise, like any object, can never exceed the speed of light. How to build such a propulsion system is far beyond our current level of knowledge and technology, there may well be unforeseen problems that will be insurmountable always, however advanced we might become.
Carl Sagan called upon his friend Kip Thorne – a worm-hole expert – to help with the physics of fast transport for the book "Contact"; worm-holes are another possibility but major problems arise with keeping them open and stable. Carl neatly avoided this by having the aliens explain that even they didn't build the transit system, it was a vastly more intelligent and ancient species that constructed it, abandoned it, and then left. It's extremely unlikely that we will ever stumble across such a system in reality.
It's difficult to be optimistic about future space travel, worst of all, it seems increasingly doubtful that we will ever get to the point where we actually need it; right now, annihilation seems a more likely probability. Back in the sixties, we were all filled with great optimism about the future of space exploration, we were naïve; sadly, the moon landings were not about the future of humanity; they were about very geocentric small-minded notions of politics and militarism.
Other Comments by Yorker
26. Comment #36269 by dlitt on April 30, 2007 at 5:39 pm
Sounds a bit difficult, but at the current rate of the 'impossible' becoming achievable - as the last few hundred years can attest - it may very well happen. Only one drawback. The fundaMENTALists will decree that only God can attain such speed and all funding will cease. Other Comments by dlitt
27. Comment #36279 by catchy_nick on April 30, 2007 at 6:56 pm
This is for all the "hatas" out there. Take your cell phone or blackberry or your stupid little gameboy and try explaining it to a caveman. We have acquired technology through science that was unimaginable a mere few thousand years ago(lets not forget that a few thousand years are a mere nano seconds in cosmic time). This is definitely very long term planning and thats ok. I do think this can stay on the back burner for a while and checked up on here and there. I dont think we devote much resources to the space program anyways. What needs to be done is this. Havent we found a planet perfect for life as we know it? Thats right. Its here. What are we going to do about it? I'll let Carl Sagan sum it up for me.http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p86BPM1GV8M
Other Comments by catchy_nick
28. Comment #36280 by ghostbuster on April 30, 2007 at 7:23 pm
Let's just say it is a bit egocentric to think we know all there is to know about physics, biology or any other science. Actually, we know very little. We've only been at it seriously for a couple hundred years, were plunged backwards for at least a thousand because of religion, so for heaven's sake (oops!) we can't have gotten it all solved have we?There is even theoretical room for time travel and quite frankly, what has gotten us further than anything is the ability to think outside the box.
Other Comments by ghostbuster
29. Comment #36448 by DavidMcC on May 1, 2007 at 7:02 am
Devolution, it pays to take some of the more speculative stuff in NS with a large pinch of salt, especially when it comes to time travel and extra dimensions. Other Comments by DavidMcC
30. Comment #36461 by Yorker on May 1, 2007 at 7:48 am
28. Comment #36280 by ghostbuster While it's true that some seem to think we know it all it's also clear that many people are fooled by past successes. For example, some people tend to think along the lines of: "We broke the sound barrier, why not the light barrier?" This shows a lack of knowledge; the sound barrier was merely an engineering problem, the speed of light is a universal constant, an entirely different matter.
Time travel is another thing that people love but don't think about. Let's say we could buy a guaranteed-to-work time machine construction kit, what would we do after we built it? Go back to dinosaurian times? Go back to Galilee at the time of Jesus and see if it was all true?
Sorry, not going to happen.
The best you could manage would be to go back to the exact time you finished building the machine and switched it on. Not very spectacular is it? My point of course, is that no time machine can ever go back to any point in history before it was itself created! Most people seem unable to see this simple logical fact, if they did, time travel would lose much of it's appeal.
Thinking "outside the box" often leads to madcap nonsense.
Other Comments by Yorker
31. Comment #36469 by ghostbuster on May 1, 2007 at 8:56 am
And not thinking outside the box can keep us shackled to ideas like religion.Time is, my friend, another illusion of the mind. Try reading Scientific American on that one.
And while many ideas never happen, it's the ones that do that count.
Brain-storming yields alot of nonsense, but without it, new, inventive things would never be approached. Need I mention Tesla? A virtual outcast until somebody saw profit looming.
Yonker, you keep thinking that way, the same way as your fundies who who wouldn't let a new concept in logical or illogical for testing and/or consideration based on what they "know". What I am trying to get across is that we actually know very little and therefore cannot speculate too far into the future other than "pie-in-the-sky" ideas based on our present human constructs. Quantum mechanics made many well- respected scientists shudder--but let's pretend we know everything there is no know about it, shut down the labs and for god's sake (opps) let's not question the firmly held truths. In fact, most theories begin as sounding rather absurd.
Gee, and I thought that was science's main objective.
But what I do agree with is that we are more likely to become extinct than ever get to another place or time; it may well be the failing fault of all intelligence, becoming greater than the creature's capacity to control its own annhiliation.
But then who really cares? Why bother? We came from stardust, we shall go back to it and all that really matters is what is right in front of us now. Perhaps it is fundamentally more important to study philosophy than science. How would such a civilization fare?
Other Comments by ghostbuster
32. Comment #36479 by Yorker on May 1, 2007 at 9:53 am
GhostbusterBeginning with my name, you have a few things wrong.
1.> It's Yorker, not Yonker
2.> I'm a 6.9 level atheist, not a fundie.
3.> You make too much of Tesla. I say that somewhat immodestly, as an expert in the field of HF electromagnetic radiation.
With regard to QM, I invite you to study my avatar, you may see the light. I think you got a little miffed by my statement about zany thinking, I made it with the benefit of a lifetime of scientific experience.
Other Comments by Yorker
33. Comment #36492 by squinky on May 1, 2007 at 10:25 am
Steve99 wrote:"People were saying exactly the same thing about high-speed train travel, about flying, and so on. Serious scientists last century even suggested that getting to the Moon was impossible, and gave apparently sound physical arguments why."
Your comparison is invalid. As a 19th century scientist, I could easily romanticize about a horse-and-buggy that could travel the speed of a bullet-train. That is a cake-walk compared to taking humans 170 trillion miles from Earth--food, oxygen, and all--to another solar system even granting you the most theoretical technology you can imagine (like a matter-antimatter propulsion system).
The speed of light is an absolute and bending this rule ala Popular Science is akin to psychics solving murders for the police department--wishful thinking fantasy, not science.
Clarke's first law: "Nothing is impossible" is truly a technologist's wet dream turned philosophy. Many things are impossible, even in the future.
I'm with Yorker.
Other Comments by squinky
34. Comment #36494 by squinky on May 1, 2007 at 10:31 am
Lawrence wrote:"...artificial gravity, radiation sheilding, suspended animation anyone? While such technologies remain in the relm of science fiction at the moment, they are within our technological grasp. There's also a fair few technologies that could potentially acelerate a spacecraft to a perceptible fraction of the speed of light, as I aluded to above."
Artificial gravity: OK (big ship that one)
Radiation shielding: OK (much bigger and heavier ship that now needs an engine 1000x larger than before
Suspended animation: study anesthesia more and you still get bombarded by Xrays.
Speed: Let's assume you could pull off 0.1 lightspeed. OK, see you at Gliese 581c in 200 years--call me! (I'll wait the extra 20 years to make sure you made it).
Other Comments by squinky
35. Comment #36507 by Yorker on May 1, 2007 at 11:14 am
31. Comment #36469 by ghostbuster Perhaps it is fundamentally more important to study philosophy than science. How would such a civilization fare?
Badly, I would think. They would probably have worked out many possibilities but would be clueless about making things happen and would have difficulty keeping their cave warm in winter! :)
Other Comments by Yorker
36. Comment #36542 by ghostbuster on May 1, 2007 at 1:15 pm
Come to think of it, most people are clueless and will shortly be having difficulty warming their caves. And the point?Is it not at least possible to think of a creature, say the dolphin or whale, as a civilization based entirely on philosophy? There can be different definitions of civilization and not all of them need be based on material things.
Perhaps if they had invented guns they could have shot back at the whalers, but my point is that an intelligent creature could find happiness and contentment within philosophy (not religion) and still not have scientific sophistication.
We can be bound also by a scientific worldview, a "hierarchy of importances" leading to an "absolute restriction of attention such that everything that is not explained is not in view". (Julian James)
There is no final answer, or single truth, or single cause--and it would be to science's greatest advantage to be relieved of some of its human constructs. Using present day science to look into the future thousands, maybe millions of years down the road is akin to looking at entrails of dead chickens, a kind of scientific superstition. We just don't know enough to make any really good guesses about what lies ahead, if anything, about space travel, life forms, other universes or the micro-universes or entirely different perspectives about the universe from the perspective of another creature. Yes, there is no avidence but must I quote the rest? Absence of evidence is not evidence of abscence.
Can't we play with ideas? And know not only their limitations but our own?
Other Comments by ghostbuster
37. Comment #36544 by ghostbuster on May 1, 2007 at 1:20 pm
By the way, first fire was not seen as science but as magic.Other Comments by ghostbuster
38. Comment #36557 by Yorker on May 1, 2007 at 2:22 pm
36. Comment #36542 by ghostbuster Like many here ghostbuster, humour is apparently lost on you I see. I could reply in depth to you, but instead, urge you to consider your own comments more deeply. As an example, you ask if we can't play with ideas, I would reply that of course we can, that is an essential part of the scientific method. It was from ideas that many theories were born, but it's very important to be acutely aware of the difference between idea and theory. Theory is as close to fact as we can be sure of, unsubstantiated ideas mean nothing and are discarded 90% of the time; the good scientist knows when to stop wasting time on a fruitless idea.
Other Comments by Yorker
39. Comment #36614 by John Phillips on May 1, 2007 at 6:26 pm
But most of the problems facing human travel to planets such as this one are already largely financial and political in nature. For we already have technologies that with suitable development resources would take us up to significant fractions of light speed and we also know the answers for most of the other problems mentioned here. If the moon race had been a genuine attempt to reach it as a genuine stepping off point then we would probably be at or past that stage already. Unfortunately, the moon race was simply a who can piss higher contest between the US and the USSR and once won there was little public or political will to expend any more resources.Other Comments by John Phillips
40. Comment #37032 by ghostbuster on May 3, 2007 at 7:58 am
My point exactly. Of course ideas are rejected 90% of the time, perhaps more, but it is the 10% we are looking for. We often cannot get to that 10% without the 90%.And, some ideas were rejected once and then were adopted later when the evidence was in.
I know the difference between an idea and a theory, but the idea comes first.
The other point was that we cannot become as dogmatic as the religions we abhor. Debate, also the realm of philosophy, must never be discouraged by those who think they know everything. I do not mind the previous posts who have considered possible scenerios, whether ridiculous or plausible; to humiliate shuts down ideas.
I am a 10.0 atheist.
Lots of spelling mistakes on this blog--your point?
While you make statements with the benefit of a lifetime of science that may be your weakness. "everything that is not explained is not
in view."
Other Comments by ghostbuster
41. Comment #37036 by epeeist on May 3, 2007 at 8:19 am
Comment #36492 by squinky
That is a cake-walk compared to taking humans 170 trillion miles from Earth--food, oxygen, and all--to another solar system
So don't send humans. Send embryos and smart machines to hatch them and supervise their development. Send a cloning unit and minds in digital form. There are alternatives, you just have to have some imagination.
The speed of light is an absolute
According to Einstein's theories. Well corroborated I will give you but they may be incorrect or there may be way around them. If not then see the ideas above.
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42. Comment #37065 by ghostbuster on May 3, 2007 at 10:15 am
I would like to note that science has done us trememdous good but it has allowed us to tinker with tremendous evil. We are a species that did not consider philosophy enough; religion was the end all and be all of what we were to know and then, never to debate. With this, we now have minds emotionally stuck in the 4th Century operating 21st Century technology that can and very likely will make us extinct--so getting a 120 trillion miles in space is likely a moot point. I will also point out that it may do some of us readers to actually look at Grayling's articles/papers/books. They are not to be missed. Science should never have been nor should ever be divorced from philosophy.Other Comments by ghostbuster
43. Comment #37595 by j42lewis on May 5, 2007 at 10:00 am
Squinky, Yorker, I see what you are trying to do and you are to be commended for attempting to keep cool heads about speculative ideas & shut down perceived pseudoscientific ramblings. But - you know there's always a "but" with intros like that - I don't think that what those like Ghostbuster are suggesting is of the sort that needs to be shut down. Ghostbuster admits he is speculating, and his speculations are based at least in part on the best estimations of reality we have at the moment.Yorker - You mention that even if we were theoretically able to build a time machine, it would only be able to send us back to the time in which the machine was built. You mention that this would diminish the interest in such a machine. Why? I think that if even this were actually possible it would be fantastic, incredible, a milestone in human history. I can't imagine how it would work or what "rules" reality would impose on its use, and it seems entirely too good to be true. But I don't think the limitations render the idea uninteresting or non-useful (if realized) whatsoever.
Squinky - You urge us to "call you" when we reach Gliese in 200 years :) If this sort of journey were possible only in a very large & expensive vessel, and it were not feasible to travel any faster, this again would still fascinate me. The idea that space travel may not turn out to be as immediate or glamorous as is portrayed in science fiction, and may instead consist of a single "seed planet", Earth, eventually & over many centuries or millenia dispatching hundreds, thousands, millions of nascent colonies to other worlds, all separated from one another by not only immense stretches of space but also huge expanses of time, is a beautiful one. The thought of innumerable human civilizations sprouting throughout the galaxies and the universe flowering with life throughout deep time is to me more magnificent & awe-inspiring a possibility than the obviously fake & cliche worlds of Star Trek & Star Wars which only imitate the political & social dynamics of 20th century Earth. This, even if when realized it would mean neither I or any single human being could ever visit all of these places or even hear back to know for sure if any of them had been a success - quite a lonely prospect.
I find it interesting enough to consider what we already know about the universe & its possibilities, but it should be permissible to use imagination to suppose what it would be like if certain ideas pan out. Lets distinguish ideas such as near-lightspeed travel, quantum computers & fusion power from concepts such as fairies or astrology which have no basis in our present picture of reality.
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44. Comment #39052 by readerjen on May 9, 2007 at 9:35 pm
Is warp drive the same as a tesseract?Other Comments by readerjen
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1. Comment #36073 by Paul Nettleship on April 30, 2007 at 6:07 am
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