6 ms·

> Light is incredibly slow, and everything seems out of reach. Yes, agreed. I find it a little depressing. An unimaginably huge universe, tantalisingly there,

> Light is incredibly slow, and everything seems out of reach. Yes, agreed. I find it a little depressing. An unimaginably huge universe, tantalisingly there, but completely out of reach.

once_inc 1y ago
Assuming our models of the universe are correct, and faster than light travel is impossible. There are very strong reasons to believe this, but perhaps we can cheat by stretching and compressing space around us.
nurettin 1y ago
Meh, most of it is just more of the same thing. I'd rather play with a paper plane than float in space.
sheepscreek 1y ago
It’s not the destination, it’s the journey :)
- ant6n 1y ago
  10,000 years of empty space to get to the next solar system. Exciting.
  - dylan604 1y ago
    Plenty of time for reflection on one’s choices in life that put them in that situation.
    - ant6n 1y ago
      Especially generation 143 of 330, they can definitely spend their whole life on that reflection.
      - literalAardvark 1y ago
        Speaking of which, Peter Watts' Sunflower Series has a great and short enough hard-ish scifi story about just such a ship.
  - sheepscreek 1y ago
    Not with light speed travel. At even 1% the speed of light, the travel time diminishes significantly: - Titan, Io and Ganymede are only 2.5 days away - Pluto is about 23 days Edit: Even at such speeds, we still can’t visit a nearby star system in a reasonable time-frame. Oh well.
    - Reubachi 1y ago
      As time passes, the universe is expanding infinitely in every direction from every point. Even if we could travel at 1 percent the speed of light, the "destination" would be inflating away from us at much greater relatavistic speed. To your point, this is less an issue with solar or extra solar objects.
      - ToValueFunfetti 1y ago
        Doesn't this depend on the initial distance to the destination? I'm thinking you have to be going ~140M light-years for cosmic expansion to exceed 1%c, and Proxima Centauri is only ~4 light-years away
    - Sharlin 1y ago
      Traveling at .1c within the solar system wouldn’t really be feasible due to the need to accelerate and decelerate. Not for meatbag ships anyway.
      - ryandrake 1y ago
        There's nothing about 0.1c or even 0.999c travel that's detrimental to meatbags. They would both feel exactly the same to the traveler. If your (for now) imaginary rocket could accelerate at a constant, gentle 1G, you could reach 0.1c in about a month (traveler's time), and you could reach 0.999c in about 44 months. Building and fueling such a rocket is the hard part.
        Sharlin 1y ago
        My point was that the GP talked about flight times assuming instantaneous acceleration and deceleration. Also, 1G of acceleration sustained over a month is more or less impossible for meatbag-sized spacecraft, especially if you need to also accelerate all the fuel you’ll need to decelerate. The rocket equation is simply way too brutal. Something like nuclear pulse propulsion might come close. Or antimatter propulsion if we’ll ever be able to create and store entire moles worth of antimatter.
  - PartiallyTyped 1y ago
    We can instead happily drive our solar system in a different direction by nudging the sun. At this point in humanity's history, I think that's more feasible than high speed traveling.
raxxorraxor 1y ago
Not out of reach if you get very close to light speed. Time would advance very slowly for you, so counterintuitively it is possible to travel 5000ly in your life time. Although for everyone else at least 5000 years will pass, so better say goodbye to family and friend. Hm, not sure if that is really less depressing... Also light isn't slow. A photon instantly travels to the end of time and yet it still takes a few minutes from the surface of the sun to us. Or about 100000 years from the center of the sun to its surface.
- amne 1y ago
  How would that feel as a traveler? Does all motion slow down to a crawl, all sub-atomic particles just "freeze" and essentially your thoughts and body aging too? So it would seem like you got there in an instant? For sure you're not just sitting there watching people get born, live and die in second and shrugging your shoulders.
  - Sharlin 1y ago
    You’d feel nothing out of the ordinary whatsoever. The starscape outside the ship would look strange though, shrinking into a small, blueshifted patch of sky straight ahead, while stars behind you would redshift out of the visible range. Everything moving at very low speeds relative to you would indeed appear to happen really fast.
    - amelius 1y ago
      What are the chances of hitting a small meteorite or part of it, traveling now at relativistic speeds wrt you?
      - kqr 1y ago
        Extremely low. Space is very empty.
        brazzy 1y ago
gwbas1c 1y ago
It makes me wonder what kind of "life" could perform interstellar travel? I used to imagine a spaceship being alive, with people inside being analogous to "cells" in a multicellular organism. Perhaps this is really how AI achieves consciousness?
- EB-Barrington 1y ago
  [dead]
- kqr 1y ago
  https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Generation_ship https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Generation_ship
  - TheOtherHobbes 1y ago
    To make a generation ship work you have to build a self-contained ecology that is stable and self-repairing, inside mechanical and software systems that are fault tolerant and either extremely redundant or self-repairing, run by a political and social system that is also fault-tolerant and self-repairing. We know how to do exactly zero of those things.
    - danudey 1y ago
      There's a CRPG I've been meaning to play where this is basically the plot; there was a generation ship, it was heading towards some planet or another, but the social and political structure on the ship broke down at some point and now there's no one actually in charge, the ship is getting run down, and they probably blew past their destination a hundred years ago if they were even still on course at all. I remember someone pointing out that a generation ship could be problematic because you have one generation who decides to launch this expedition but will never see the end, multiple generations who didn't choose this life and won't get to see the benefits, and then one generation who actually gets to the planet but might not even want to be there. Without some kind of cryogenic sleep or relativistic speeds the whole thing might fall apart just because most of the people involved "didn't sign up for this" but they have to toil away anyway for someone else to benefit from it.
UltraSane 1y ago
Not if you are an immortal AI or uploaded human.

> Light is incredibly slow, and everything seems out of reach. Yes, agreed. I find it a little depressing. An unimaginably huge universe, tantalisingly there, but completely out of reach.

once_inc 1y ago

Assuming our models of the universe are correct, and faster than light travel is impossible. There are very strong reasons to believe this, but perhaps we can cheat by stretching and compressing space around us.

nurettin 1y ago

Meh, most of it is just more of the same thing. I'd rather play with a paper plane than float in space.

sheepscreek 1y ago

It’s not the destination, it’s the journey :)

ant6n 1y ago
10,000 years of empty space to get to the next solar system. Exciting.
- dylan604 1y ago
  Plenty of time for reflection on one’s choices in life that put them in that situation.
  - ant6n 1y ago
    Especially generation 143 of 330, they can definitely spend their whole life on that reflection.
    - literalAardvark 1y ago
      Speaking of which, Peter Watts' Sunflower Series has a great and short enough hard-ish scifi story about just such a ship.
- sheepscreek 1y ago
  Not with light speed travel. At even 1% the speed of light, the travel time diminishes significantly: - Titan, Io and Ganymede are only 2.5 days away - Pluto is about 23 days Edit: Even at such speeds, we still can’t visit a nearby star system in a reasonable time-frame. Oh well.
  - Reubachi 1y ago
    As time passes, the universe is expanding infinitely in every direction from every point. Even if we could travel at 1 percent the speed of light, the "destination" would be inflating away from us at much greater relatavistic speed. To your point, this is less an issue with solar or extra solar objects.
    - ToValueFunfetti 1y ago
      Doesn't this depend on the initial distance to the destination? I'm thinking you have to be going ~140M light-years for cosmic expansion to exceed 1%c, and Proxima Centauri is only ~4 light-years away
  - Sharlin 1y ago
    Traveling at .1c within the solar system wouldn’t really be feasible due to the need to accelerate and decelerate. Not for meatbag ships anyway.
    - ryandrake 1y ago
      There's nothing about 0.1c or even 0.999c travel that's detrimental to meatbags. They would both feel exactly the same to the traveler. If your (for now) imaginary rocket could accelerate at a constant, gentle 1G, you could reach 0.1c in about a month (traveler's time), and you could reach 0.999c in about 44 months. Building and fueling such a rocket is the hard part.
      - Sharlin 1y ago
        My point was that the GP talked about flight times assuming instantaneous acceleration and deceleration. Also, 1G of acceleration sustained over a month is more or less impossible for meatbag-sized spacecraft, especially if you need to also accelerate all the fuel you’ll need to decelerate. The rocket equation is simply way too brutal. Something like nuclear pulse propulsion might come close. Or antimatter propulsion if we’ll ever be able to create and store entire moles worth of antimatter.
- PartiallyTyped 1y ago
  We can instead happily drive our solar system in a different direction by nudging the sun. At this point in humanity's history, I think that's more feasible than high speed traveling.

raxxorraxor 1y ago

Not out of reach if you get very close to light speed. Time would advance very slowly for you, so counterintuitively it is possible to travel 5000ly in your life time. Although for everyone else at least 5000 years will pass, so better say goodbye to family and friend. Hm, not sure if that is really less depressing... Also light isn't slow. A photon instantly travels to the end of time and yet it still takes a few minutes from the surface of the sun to us. Or about 100000 years from the center of the sun to its surface.

amne 1y ago
How would that feel as a traveler? Does all motion slow down to a crawl, all sub-atomic particles just "freeze" and essentially your thoughts and body aging too? So it would seem like you got there in an instant? For sure you're not just sitting there watching people get born, live and die in second and shrugging your shoulders.
- Sharlin 1y ago
  You’d feel nothing out of the ordinary whatsoever. The starscape outside the ship would look strange though, shrinking into a small, blueshifted patch of sky straight ahead, while stars behind you would redshift out of the visible range. Everything moving at very low speeds relative to you would indeed appear to happen really fast.
  - amelius 1y ago
    What are the chances of hitting a small meteorite or part of it, traveling now at relativistic speeds wrt you?
    - kqr 1y ago
      Extremely low. Space is very empty.
      - brazzy 1y ago

gwbas1c 1y ago

It makes me wonder what kind of "life" could perform interstellar travel? I used to imagine a spaceship being alive, with people inside being analogous to "cells" in a multicellular organism. Perhaps this is really how AI achieves consciousness?

EB-Barrington 1y ago
[dead]
kqr 1y ago
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Generation_ship https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Generation_ship
- TheOtherHobbes 1y ago
  To make a generation ship work you have to build a self-contained ecology that is stable and self-repairing, inside mechanical and software systems that are fault tolerant and either extremely redundant or self-repairing, run by a political and social system that is also fault-tolerant and self-repairing. We know how to do exactly zero of those things.
  - danudey 1y ago
    There's a CRPG I've been meaning to play where this is basically the plot; there was a generation ship, it was heading towards some planet or another, but the social and political structure on the ship broke down at some point and now there's no one actually in charge, the ship is getting run down, and they probably blew past their destination a hundred years ago if they were even still on course at all. I remember someone pointing out that a generation ship could be problematic because you have one generation who decides to launch this expedition but will never see the end, multiple generations who didn't choose this life and won't get to see the benefits, and then one generation who actually gets to the planet but might not even want to be there. Without some kind of cryogenic sleep or relativistic speeds the whole thing might fall apart just because most of the people involved "didn't sign up for this" but they have to toil away anyway for someone else to benefit from it.

UltraSane 1y ago

Not if you are an immortal AI or uploaded human.