4 ms·

No. Faster than light travel is impossible. Aliens are easy to detect if they are anywhere nearby.

ceejayoz 9y ago
> Faster than light travel is impossible. We just discovered our first extrasolar planets in 1992, so let's not pat ourselves on the back for having 100% complete knowledge of everything possible in the universe just yet. > Aliens are easy to detect if they are anywhere nearby. Oh, honestly. We can't even detect a stealth aircraft a couple hundred miles away. Submarines can go undetected for months at a time. Asteroids are spotted after they pass between us and the moon. I suspect alien stealth tech would be at least as good as our own.
- valuearb 9y ago
  The amount of energy required to operate a submarine or stealth fighter is less than a trillionth trillionth the amount needed to propel a starship. Asteroids don’t emit energy. That energy is easy to detect upon deceleration into our solar system. And the limit of speed of light is a basic cosmological principle. Faster than light speed travel would violate all principles of our universe, it couldn’t exist in it’s present form.
  - ceejayoz 9y ago
    > The amount of energy required to operate a submarine or stealth fighter is less than a trillionth trillionth the amount needed to propel a starship. In a trillion trillion times the volume. You could also have a seemingly inert asteroid that lobs out small probes as it passes through a system for fairly minimal energy signature. > And the limit of speed of light is a basic cosmological principle. Faster than light speed travel would violate all principles of our universe, it couldn’t exist in it’s present form. Both relativity and quantum physics came about because we found stuff that violated stuff we thought were principles of our universe. Even our current theory seems to permit workarounds like wormholes or https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alcubierre_drive https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alcubierre_drive.

> Faster than light travel is impossible. We just discovered our first extrasolar planets in 1992, so let's not pat ourselves on the back for having 100% complete knowledge of everything possible in the universe just yet. > Aliens are easy to detect if they are anywhere nearby. Oh, honestly. We can't even detect a stealth aircraft a couple hundred miles away. Submarines can go undetected for months at a time. Asteroids are spotted after they pass between us and the moon. I suspect alien stealth tech would be at least as good as our own.

valuearb 9y ago
The amount of energy required to operate a submarine or stealth fighter is less than a trillionth trillionth the amount needed to propel a starship. Asteroids don’t emit energy. That energy is easy to detect upon deceleration into our solar system. And the limit of speed of light is a basic cosmological principle. Faster than light speed travel would violate all principles of our universe, it couldn’t exist in it’s present form.
- ceejayoz 9y ago
  > The amount of energy required to operate a submarine or stealth fighter is less than a trillionth trillionth the amount needed to propel a starship. In a trillion trillion times the volume. You could also have a seemingly inert asteroid that lobs out small probes as it passes through a system for fairly minimal energy signature. > And the limit of speed of light is a basic cosmological principle. Faster than light speed travel would violate all principles of our universe, it couldn’t exist in it’s present form. Both relativity and quantum physics came about because we found stuff that violated stuff we thought were principles of our universe. Even our current theory seems to permit workarounds like wormholes or https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alcubierre_drive https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alcubierre_drive.