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The hard fact is there are no shortcuts to interstellar travel, barring new physics. Any trip will consume vast amounts of energy and it will take decades if no

The hard fact is there are no shortcuts to interstellar travel, barring new physics. Any trip will consume vast amounts of energy and it will take decades if not centuries or longer. Advanced tech may reduce the expense to your civilization but the fact won't change. While all life, ants or not, may be universally worthy of study, is it worth that much sacrifice? Also, if the ants talk, exchanging messages would make more sense for study.

cnity 6y ago
> barring new physics Our understanding of physics changes constantly!
- bbarnett 6y ago
  Indeed. So many seem to exude the concept that "today we know precisely how the universe works". Would one insist that Newtonian physics was the Only Way to Think of Things, prior to Einsteinian? While the speed of light may remain a barrier, it may not. Presuming the ability to be reached by a society which likely possesses scientific knowledge beyond ours, is to be a Roman, and presume the sun travels around the Earth, that the 4 aethers exist, and become angered otherwise.
  - simiones 6y ago
    The problem with this train of thought is that it fails to account for the observations so far. We know that the amount of energy required to accelerate an object increases as its speed approaches the speed of light. We have observed this effect. New physics will never contradict this - they may just put it in a new light, or perhaps discover a new dimension. But they will not invalidate the measurements we have so far. Note that the observations done in Newton's time were never proved wrong - we just discovered that with better measurement precision and in different regimes of speed, they turn out to have additional small terms. It is perfectly possible that we'll discover additional extremely weak forces and effects, and they may completely contradict our interpretations of the physical theories we've discovered, but they are unlikely to prove that the facts (measurements themselves) we know now are wrong, at least in the regimes we've noticed them.
    - cnity 6y ago
      > Note that the observations done in Newton's time were never proved wrong - we just discovered that with better measurement precision and in different regimes of speed, they turn out to have additional small terms. This is not quite the right way to look at it. The general theory of relativity isn't just some unmeasurable difference in the margins of the calculations. There are _real_ situations (e.g. near a black hole) where the predicted properties of relativity totally overwhelm the predicted movements under newtonian physics. It's not insane to think that there equally are not-yet-predicted situations in which FTL speed is possible, under conditions that have never been possible in the natural universe but are possible with human intervention. If you don't believe that humans are capable of achieving such situations, look simply at our creation of anti-matter despite ~essentially being unable to find~ rarely finding any in the natural universe.
      - simiones 6y ago
        > The general theory of relativity isn't just some unmeasurable difference in the margins of the calculations. There are _real_ situations (e.g. near a black hole) where the predicted properties of relativity totally overwhelm the predicted movements under newtonian physics. A much better example of the practical consequences is special relativity's adjustments of the laws of motion, which are necessary for example to synchronize GPS. However, my point is that no such observations had been done in Newton's time (they had no satellites in orbit, nor any black holes to study). > It's not insane to think that there equally are not-yet-predicted situations in which FTL speed is possible, under conditions that have never been possible in the natural universe but are possible with human intervention. I do think that imagining we could create conditions that have never happened in the natural universe before in such a way that we overcome what seem to be fundamental constants is a bit insane. Remember that our current understanding is essentially that all objects constantly move with speed c in 4D Minkowsky space time, and that acceleration can only switch the direction of this movement, not the actual length of the movement vector. Moving faster than c in any of the space directions would then require negative speed in the time direction. It's of course not impossible that this theory is wrong. But there is also no reason to believe that it isn't wrong and that c is just a fundamental constant of the universe that is impossible to go past. The fact that the maximum speed we can travel or measure has increased constantly over humanity's evolution is much, much weaker evidence than all of the data that have led to the theory of special relativity and our understanding of the fundamental limits of speed. In other words, while it is of course impossible to predict how our science will evolve, my money would be firmly on the c limit being fundamental. I would bet that 5000 years from now, there will be no change in this observation (though the exact nature of the equations of motion, gravity, its relation to particle physics and so on will likely all be significantly different).
PartiallyTyped 6y ago
There is a paper that suggests we could, in theory, direct the sun itself towards something while we continued to live as we normally do with little to no change in our lives until we arrived at our destination. This does not effectively cost as much, but it will take a lot of time. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0094576519312457 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S00945...
- bbarnett 6y ago
  Interesting. Wan-to did such things, a plasmatic being which lives ib a star, via author Fredrick Pohl. The World at the End of Time. I wonder, did the author of the study read, then postulate?
- Cthulhu_ 6y ago
  At those time scales though, the whole world's population would not only have forgotten, but probably gone extinct and re-evolved multiple times over. Humans have only been a thing for a few million years, if that.
chrisseaton 6y ago
> The hard fact is there are no shortcuts to interstellar travel, barring new physics. Do you know that early in the development of trains people were sure it would be physically impossible for humans to travel over 30 mph or so? They thought something would happen with the air pressure or something. Our understanding of physics changes.
- sandworm101 6y ago
  Only the crackpots thought train travel impossible. Anyone with experience of air moving at such speeds, ie the everyone in the navy, knew there wouldn't be a problem.
  - chrisseaton 6y ago
    It's easy to sort the crackpots from the people who know what they're talking about post hoc! Not so easy before!
- jkingsbery 6y ago
  Given that horses run faster than 30 mph [1], and people have been riding on horses for a while before trains were developed [2], this seems unlikely. [1] https://horseandrider.com/western-horse-life/fastest-a-quarter-horse-thoroughbred-has-run https://horseandrider.com/western-horse-life/fastest-a-quart... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Domestication_of_the_horse https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Domestication_of_the_horse
  - chrisseaton 6y ago
    > this seems unlikely Well duh nobody thinks it's likely now! Obviously I don't believe it so don't explain it to me, explain it to people at the time! https://www.mentalfloss.com/article/67806/early-trains-were-thought-make-womens-uteruses-fly-out https://www.mentalfloss.com/article/67806/early-trains-were-... (This article says 50, which is still slower than a horse in your link, but I've read 30 in books.)
    - 6y ago
Dirlewanger 6y ago
Interstellar travel simply isn't happening without something like the Alcubierre drive.
- simiones 6y ago
  Even the Alcubierre drive may not actually work: https://backreaction.blogspot.com/2020/11/warp-drive-news-seriously.html https://backreaction.blogspot.com/2020/11/warp-drive-news-se... > As I explained earlier, the relevant question is then, what does the wall of the passenger area have to be made of? Is this a physically possible distribution of mass and energy? Bobrick and Martire explain that if you want superluminal motion, you need negative energy densities. If you want acceleration, you need to feed energy and momentum into the system. And the only reason the Alcubierre Drive moves faster than the speed of light is that one simply assumed it does. Suddenly it all makes sense!
King-Aaron 6y ago
> no shortcuts to interstellar travel Wormholes tho

cnity 6y ago

> barring new physics Our understanding of physics changes constantly!

bbarnett 6y ago
Indeed. So many seem to exude the concept that "today we know precisely how the universe works". Would one insist that Newtonian physics was the Only Way to Think of Things, prior to Einsteinian? While the speed of light may remain a barrier, it may not. Presuming the ability to be reached by a society which likely possesses scientific knowledge beyond ours, is to be a Roman, and presume the sun travels around the Earth, that the 4 aethers exist, and become angered otherwise.
- simiones 6y ago
  The problem with this train of thought is that it fails to account for the observations so far. We know that the amount of energy required to accelerate an object increases as its speed approaches the speed of light. We have observed this effect. New physics will never contradict this - they may just put it in a new light, or perhaps discover a new dimension. But they will not invalidate the measurements we have so far. Note that the observations done in Newton's time were never proved wrong - we just discovered that with better measurement precision and in different regimes of speed, they turn out to have additional small terms. It is perfectly possible that we'll discover additional extremely weak forces and effects, and they may completely contradict our interpretations of the physical theories we've discovered, but they are unlikely to prove that the facts (measurements themselves) we know now are wrong, at least in the regimes we've noticed them.
  - cnity 6y ago
    > Note that the observations done in Newton's time were never proved wrong - we just discovered that with better measurement precision and in different regimes of speed, they turn out to have additional small terms. This is not quite the right way to look at it. The general theory of relativity isn't just some unmeasurable difference in the margins of the calculations. There are _real_ situations (e.g. near a black hole) where the predicted properties of relativity totally overwhelm the predicted movements under newtonian physics. It's not insane to think that there equally are not-yet-predicted situations in which FTL speed is possible, under conditions that have never been possible in the natural universe but are possible with human intervention. If you don't believe that humans are capable of achieving such situations, look simply at our creation of anti-matter despite ~essentially being unable to find~ rarely finding any in the natural universe.
    - simiones 6y ago
      > The general theory of relativity isn't just some unmeasurable difference in the margins of the calculations. There are _real_ situations (e.g. near a black hole) where the predicted properties of relativity totally overwhelm the predicted movements under newtonian physics. A much better example of the practical consequences is special relativity's adjustments of the laws of motion, which are necessary for example to synchronize GPS. However, my point is that no such observations had been done in Newton's time (they had no satellites in orbit, nor any black holes to study). > It's not insane to think that there equally are not-yet-predicted situations in which FTL speed is possible, under conditions that have never been possible in the natural universe but are possible with human intervention. I do think that imagining we could create conditions that have never happened in the natural universe before in such a way that we overcome what seem to be fundamental constants is a bit insane. Remember that our current understanding is essentially that all objects constantly move with speed c in 4D Minkowsky space time, and that acceleration can only switch the direction of this movement, not the actual length of the movement vector. Moving faster than c in any of the space directions would then require negative speed in the time direction. It's of course not impossible that this theory is wrong. But there is also no reason to believe that it isn't wrong and that c is just a fundamental constant of the universe that is impossible to go past. The fact that the maximum speed we can travel or measure has increased constantly over humanity's evolution is much, much weaker evidence than all of the data that have led to the theory of special relativity and our understanding of the fundamental limits of speed. In other words, while it is of course impossible to predict how our science will evolve, my money would be firmly on the c limit being fundamental. I would bet that 5000 years from now, there will be no change in this observation (though the exact nature of the equations of motion, gravity, its relation to particle physics and so on will likely all be significantly different).

PartiallyTyped 6y ago

There is a paper that suggests we could, in theory, direct the sun itself towards something while we continued to live as we normally do with little to no change in our lives until we arrived at our destination. This does not effectively cost as much, but it will take a lot of time. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0094576519312457 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S00945...

bbarnett 6y ago
Interesting. Wan-to did such things, a plasmatic being which lives ib a star, via author Fredrick Pohl. The World at the End of Time. I wonder, did the author of the study read, then postulate?
Cthulhu_ 6y ago
At those time scales though, the whole world's population would not only have forgotten, but probably gone extinct and re-evolved multiple times over. Humans have only been a thing for a few million years, if that.

chrisseaton 6y ago

> The hard fact is there are no shortcuts to interstellar travel, barring new physics. Do you know that early in the development of trains people were sure it would be physically impossible for humans to travel over 30 mph or so? They thought something would happen with the air pressure or something. Our understanding of physics changes.

sandworm101 6y ago
Only the crackpots thought train travel impossible. Anyone with experience of air moving at such speeds, ie the everyone in the navy, knew there wouldn't be a problem.
- chrisseaton 6y ago
  It's easy to sort the crackpots from the people who know what they're talking about post hoc! Not so easy before!
jkingsbery 6y ago
Given that horses run faster than 30 mph [1], and people have been riding on horses for a while before trains were developed [2], this seems unlikely. [1] https://horseandrider.com/western-horse-life/fastest-a-quarter-horse-thoroughbred-has-run https://horseandrider.com/western-horse-life/fastest-a-quart... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Domestication_of_the_horse https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Domestication_of_the_horse
- chrisseaton 6y ago
  > this seems unlikely Well duh nobody thinks it's likely now! Obviously I don't believe it so don't explain it to me, explain it to people at the time! https://www.mentalfloss.com/article/67806/early-trains-were-thought-make-womens-uteruses-fly-out https://www.mentalfloss.com/article/67806/early-trains-were-... (This article says 50, which is still slower than a horse in your link, but I've read 30 in books.)
  - 6y ago

Dirlewanger 6y ago

Interstellar travel simply isn't happening without something like the Alcubierre drive.

simiones 6y ago
Even the Alcubierre drive may not actually work: https://backreaction.blogspot.com/2020/11/warp-drive-news-seriously.html https://backreaction.blogspot.com/2020/11/warp-drive-news-se... > As I explained earlier, the relevant question is then, what does the wall of the passenger area have to be made of? Is this a physically possible distribution of mass and energy? Bobrick and Martire explain that if you want superluminal motion, you need negative energy densities. If you want acceleration, you need to feed energy and momentum into the system. And the only reason the Alcubierre Drive moves faster than the speed of light is that one simply assumed it does. Suddenly it all makes sense!

King-Aaron 6y ago

> no shortcuts to interstellar travel Wormholes tho