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I strongly disagree, it's not beyond the dreams of humans to travel a few light years away with generational starships. How are you going to travel all the way

by rnk 3y ago

I strongly disagree, it's not beyond the dreams of humans to travel a few light years away with generational starships. How are you going to travel all the way across the galaxy without faster than light travel. We could send humans in the journey to the nearest stars within the next thousand years. At least we could start the ships. That's with only a little bit more technology than we have today. But colonizing the galaxy takes imagining things we have no idea if they will ever be possible, like faster than light travel.

Nevermark 3y ago
Using lasers and light sails small craft can be accelerated to a noticeable fraction of the speed of light. We will be sending entire civilizations of nanobots, or at least small artificial organisms. At 5% of the speed of light, including travel, reproduction & relaunches, a civilization like that at the center of the galaxy will reach the rim in 100,000 years. At the nano level time effective massively expands. Activity at that scale operates with speeds many magnitudes faster than gargantuan Ent-like beings like us, can easily imagine. :) It isn’t a journey suitable for humans, and our position here is changing rapidly decade to decade. The galaxy was never going to belong to humans, but hopefully our progeny. — Then there is hope from physicists, that harnessing stellar level energy will allow faster than light warp travel. That would let beings cross the vast spaces between galaxies.
pixl97 3y ago
>But colonizing the galaxy takes imagining things we have no idea if they will ever be possible, like faster than light travel. Not at all depending on the timeframe you want to talk about in. For example, one way to travel around the galaxy is to find some other object with a very fast orbit and colonize it. Then as it goes along you throw off seed ships. This is the whole idea behind 'von neumann probes'. Massive numbers of things working in parallel can get a lot of work done.
- rnk 3y ago
  I understood the article above saying we could finishing colonizing most of the galaxy in little time, say 1000 years. But the galaxy is much larger than 1000 light years so without FTL travel (impossible afawk), that's why I said you can't do it. But were you saying "get started on this in 1000 years" instead of finish in 1000 years?

by rnk 3y ago

Nevermark 3y ago

Using lasers and light sails small craft can be accelerated to a noticeable fraction of the speed of light. We will be sending entire civilizations of nanobots, or at least small artificial organisms. At 5% of the speed of light, including travel, reproduction & relaunches, a civilization like that at the center of the galaxy will reach the rim in 100,000 years. At the nano level time effective massively expands. Activity at that scale operates with speeds many magnitudes faster than gargantuan Ent-like beings like us, can easily imagine. :) It isn’t a journey suitable for humans, and our position here is changing rapidly decade to decade. The galaxy was never going to belong to humans, but hopefully our progeny. — Then there is hope from physicists, that harnessing stellar level energy will allow faster than light warp travel. That would let beings cross the vast spaces between galaxies.

pixl97 3y ago

>But colonizing the galaxy takes imagining things we have no idea if they will ever be possible, like faster than light travel. Not at all depending on the timeframe you want to talk about in. For example, one way to travel around the galaxy is to find some other object with a very fast orbit and colonize it. Then as it goes along you throw off seed ships. This is the whole idea behind 'von neumann probes'. Massive numbers of things working in parallel can get a lot of work done.

rnk 3y ago
I understood the article above saying we could finishing colonizing most of the galaxy in little time, say 1000 years. But the galaxy is much larger than 1000 light years so without FTL travel (impossible afawk), that's why I said you can't do it. But were you saying "get started on this in 1000 years" instead of finish in 1000 years?