In the comments for yesterday\u2019s post on anti-matter there was some discussion about the methodology for interstellar travel; matter\/anti-matter annihilation as a form of impulse power versus the use of a worm hole to poke in and out of space as needed. \u00a0As was intimated (being turned inside out) the current understanding of general relativity does not present any clear mechanism for human beings to utilize such a phenomenon and remain alive.\u00a0 And that got me thinking.<\/p>\n
Five hundred years ago if you wanted to go from Portugal to India you would get on a sailing ship and circumnavigate the continent of Africa and then cross the Indian Ocean.\u00a0 And when you returned from this trip thirty months would have passed.\u00a0 Today, a direct flight from Lisbon to Calcutta would take about twelve hours.\u00a0 Call it a day for a round trip.\u00a0 That\u2019s about 900 times faster than the old way.\u00a0 A trip to Mars at its shortest takes about six months.\u00a0 Adding in the return trip makes the whole voyage something like 26\u201334 months.\u00a0 If somehow, we could increase our speed by the same 900 times we could go round trip to Mars in a day.<\/p>\n
Of course that\u2019s impossible.\u00a0 But only in the sense that we would be trying to improve the same means of travel in the future case.\u00a0 So, if you told Vasco da Gama he could make a round trip to India in one day he would assume you were either joking or insane.\u00a0 Because the very idea of a jet plane was an impossibility in his world.\u00a0 Before you can have jet planes you need Galileo, Newton and Maxwell.\u00a0 In other words, you need the mathematics, physics, chemistry and engineering of the seventeenth, eighteenth and nineteenth centuries to know that a jet plane could exist.<\/p>\n
What if the mathematics, physics, chemistry, biology and engineering of the twenty second, twenty third and twenty fourth centuries conspire to make the round trip to Mars only one day by finding a completely novel approach to travel.\u00a0 What if wormholes really could be harnessed for human transport?\u00a0 Then a day long trip would just be a convenience for meals whereas actual travel time would be zero.\u00a0 But you argue, \u201cwormholes are a theoretical aspect of relativity that have never been observed and if they exist would be as inimical to human life as a black hole would be.\u00a0 And I would counter that feeding flammable liquids like octane into a machine that produces electric sparks and depends on metal parts rotating thousands of times per minute is much too dangerous a method for transporting humans from place to place.<\/p>\n
So, I won\u2019t say I know that we\u2019ll ever reach the stars.\u00a0 But I think anyone who says categorically that we cannot is making assumptions that cannot be taken as fact.\u00a0 They are conjecture based on the current understanding of physics and engineering.\u00a0 So, I guess we\u2019re free to fantasize about galactic empires and worm holes and warp drives and anything that makes us happy.\u00a0 And some days I want to read about the day after tomorrow and other days I\u2019ll dream about galactic empires.\u00a0 Why not?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
In the comments for yesterday\u2019s post on anti-matter there was some discussion about the methodology for interstellar travel; matter\/anti-matter annihilation as a form of impulse<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mi_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[5,3545,4],"tags":[5176,4772,5135,265],"class_list":["post-36549","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-current-events","category-science","category-sff","tag-faster-than-light-travel","tag-general-relativity","tag-manned-spaceflight","tag-science-fiction"],"yoast_head":"\n