6 ms·
Sending a swarm of unguided relativistic projectiles across the universe seems profoundly rude.
by 0x74696d 10y ago
Sending a swarm of unguided relativistic projectiles across the universe seems profoundly rude.
- nkrisc 10y agoTen thousand years from then, some alien on some planet somewhere might have a very bad day.
- NoGravitas 10y agoIt would be nice if they could use solar wind to decelerate as they approached. I know there's not enough energy there to insert them into an orbit, but they might get time for a few more pictures?
- 1812Overture 10y agoJust flip the battery in the laser around and it will pull instead of pushing.
- LyndsySimon 10y agoYou mean we should... reverse the polarity?
- rotexo 10y agoexcuse me, but I think you forgot to take the opportunity provided by that ellipsis to put on your visor.
- david-given 10y agoYou can --- you use a thing called a magsail. The short version is: remember the old Bussard ramscoop idea? You use a magnetic field to collect interstellar hydrogen which you then fuse for thrust? Turns out that in our part of the galaxy, you get more drag from the sail than you do from the fusion thrust, so the idea was scrapped. An embarrassingly long time later people finally realised that they'd invented a fuelless brake, and the idea was resurrected (but without the fusion drive). The maths are quite plausible and the sail itself trivially simple --- just a wire loop. http://www.centauri-dreams.org/?p=22138 http://www.centauri-dreams.org/?p=22138 However, I don't think they'd be compatible with this idea --- I suspect you wouldn't get one big enough to be useful in a one gram package. But estimating the numbers is beyond me. Here's the paper if you want it. http://www.niac.usra.edu/files/studies/final_report/320Zubrin.pdf http://www.niac.usra.edu/files/studies/final_report/320Zubri...
- mrfusion 10y agoVery fascinating! I had no idea we had such a viable option for braking. Two questions for you if you're up for it. Could we use this concept for braking during earth re entry to depend less on complex heat shields? Why is the idea of a bussard ramscoop not viable?
- maverick_iceman 10y agoWhy decelerate? At 0.2c it takes around 40 minutes to cross 1AU. (Ignoring time dilation which is not super significant at 0.2c.) That gives ample time to take photos from a moderate distance.
- Uhhrrr 10y agoMaybe it's the backstory for Seveneves.
- chasing 10y ago> a swarm of unguided relativistic projectiles In a sense, this is essentially what the universe is.
- maxxxxx 10y agoTrue, the universe is generally a pretty unfriendly place that tries to kill you in any possible way.
- amackera 10y agoTo be fair, the universe was pretty friendly and created us in the first place.
- Razengan 10y agoTechnically, we are the universe trying to understand itself.
- TheOtherHobbes 10y agoTechnically, we may be the universe trying not to kill itself.
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- hinkley 10y agoTechnically, we may be the universe trying to kill itself.
- tgflynn 10y agoI don't think you'll find 0.2c relative velocities except near very energetic phenomena, especially not of things that are too small to easily see coming.
- jerf 10y agoTheir speed isn't particularly relevant, what matters more is their energy. As big as that number is to us, it's still pretty insignificant; there's a lot of objects already traveling around with us in our own solar system with 70kT (per PaulHoule in other comments) of energy. A looooooot of objects. In the grand scheme of things, this is a rounding error on a rounding error. We are small.