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I don't believe FTL travel is possible, but if it were, the Fermi Paradox would seem to suggest it isn't obvious or trivial. It might require burning the mass e

by krapp 1y ago

I don't believe FTL travel is possible, but if it were, the Fermi Paradox would seem to suggest it isn't obvious or trivial. It might require burning the mass energy of an entire star just to open a wormhole or hacking the matrix and forking the physics engine or sacrificing us to their chaos god patrons or something. I think I'd rather deal with the aliens who just have really good rockets. At least we could potentially comprehend the rulebook they play by. Who even knows what the hell the Walkers of Sigma 957 are about?

Rooki 1y ago
IMO, If FTL was possible, something, somewhere, at some point in time would have engineered a self replicating organism capable of it. These things would be everywhere by now we would see evidence of them.
- exe34 1y ago
  Like the plants that grow mattresses. I like it!
BizarroLand 1y ago
Another theoretical possibility is that any Alien life that is exploring the universe could be more resistant to acceleration / deceleration than we squishy humans are. Perhaps they figured out AI or have made space-adapted biological life forms that can survive constant acceleration at 25Gs and are sending them out to scout the universe for other life, and once they find it they would signal back to the home planet. 25G of constant acceleration would kill any human, especially if it were maintained for the time it would take to approach light speed, but for an AI or a creature specifically developed to survive that it would make a trip to the Solar System from Alpha Centauri take 5-8 years. Then again, if they could do 1G of constant acceleration that would only add like 2 years to the total trip. Long enough to be one-way for most people but short enough to be survivable under ideal circumstances. Assuming they stopped outside of Neptune's or Pluto's orbit they would still have a few years of travel to make it to Earth but they would have started detecting our broadcasts long before arriving. I'm not saying this happened, rather that it becomes plausible when you take some liberties with the starting conditions.
- nobody9999 1y ago
  >25G of constant acceleration would kill any human, especially if it were maintained for the time it would take to approach light speed >Then again, if they could do 1G of constant acceleration that would only add like 2 years to the total trip. Long enough to be one-way for most people but short enough to be survivable under ideal circumstances. It would take ~2 weeks to to approach light speed while continuously accelerating at 25G. It would only take ~1 year to do so at 1G continuous acceleration. On cosmic time and distance scales, those are essentially the same, especially since once we approach the speed of light, there's no going faster. As such, tolerance for G forces seems pretty irrelevant for interstellar travel. Doing so within the confines of a solar system is another matter altogether, I'd expect.
  - BizarroLand 1y ago
    Humans die under 10g for more than a few minutes. Admittedly, we could position the humans to be in the optimal direction, but even 2g sustained for months would undoubtedly cause issues. I picked 25G as it would be an insane but reasonable acceleration, and time is always a factor. Trimming 2 years off of a voyage might seem worthless on an intergalactic scale, since once you are more than a few solar systems away you're on the scale of AI scouts and generation ships, but for a close star like Alpha Centauri, 2 years (each way) might be the difference between a one way death march and the possibility of a heroic return home.
    - JumpCrisscross 1y ago
      > Humans die under 10g for more than a few minutes With no air?
      - BizarroLand 1y ago
        It's not about the air. Its about our fundamental squishyness. At 10g, a 150lb man would weigh 1,500 lbs. His heart isn't strong enough to move blood that suddenly weighs 90lbs/gallon that also has to push other blood that also weighs that same amount. His blood vessels, paper thin and easily torn under normal weight, suddenly have 10 times the amount of pressure to resist. He's fine for a few moments, jet pilots experience short bursts of 10g during flights quite often, occasionally more. Might pass out after 10-20 seconds, but after 10 minutes, his brain, starved of oxygen and squished under its own weight, ceases to function. His heart or his blood vessels rip and tear from the strain, and his body falls apart inside of its own skin. It's not pretty, but it would probably be a fairly painless way to go. Getting back to your question, his ability to breathe is not relevant under those situations. The absence of oxygen would accelerate his demise no more than it would under any other situation.

by krapp 1y ago

Rooki 1y ago

IMO, If FTL was possible, something, somewhere, at some point in time would have engineered a self replicating organism capable of it. These things would be everywhere by now we would see evidence of them.

exe34 1y ago
Like the plants that grow mattresses. I like it!

BizarroLand 1y ago

Another theoretical possibility is that any Alien life that is exploring the universe could be more resistant to acceleration / deceleration than we squishy humans are. Perhaps they figured out AI or have made space-adapted biological life forms that can survive constant acceleration at 25Gs and are sending them out to scout the universe for other life, and once they find it they would signal back to the home planet. 25G of constant acceleration would kill any human, especially if it were maintained for the time it would take to approach light speed, but for an AI or a creature specifically developed to survive that it would make a trip to the Solar System from Alpha Centauri take 5-8 years. Then again, if they could do 1G of constant acceleration that would only add like 2 years to the total trip. Long enough to be one-way for most people but short enough to be survivable under ideal circumstances. Assuming they stopped outside of Neptune's or Pluto's orbit they would still have a few years of travel to make it to Earth but they would have started detecting our broadcasts long before arriving. I'm not saying this happened, rather that it becomes plausible when you take some liberties with the starting conditions.

nobody9999 1y ago
>25G of constant acceleration would kill any human, especially if it were maintained for the time it would take to approach light speed >Then again, if they could do 1G of constant acceleration that would only add like 2 years to the total trip. Long enough to be one-way for most people but short enough to be survivable under ideal circumstances. It would take ~2 weeks to to approach light speed while continuously accelerating at 25G. It would only take ~1 year to do so at 1G continuous acceleration. On cosmic time and distance scales, those are essentially the same, especially since once we approach the speed of light, there's no going faster. As such, tolerance for G forces seems pretty irrelevant for interstellar travel. Doing so within the confines of a solar system is another matter altogether, I'd expect.
- BizarroLand 1y ago
  Humans die under 10g for more than a few minutes. Admittedly, we could position the humans to be in the optimal direction, but even 2g sustained for months would undoubtedly cause issues. I picked 25G as it would be an insane but reasonable acceleration, and time is always a factor. Trimming 2 years off of a voyage might seem worthless on an intergalactic scale, since once you are more than a few solar systems away you're on the scale of AI scouts and generation ships, but for a close star like Alpha Centauri, 2 years (each way) might be the difference between a one way death march and the possibility of a heroic return home.
  - JumpCrisscross 1y ago
    > Humans die under 10g for more than a few minutes With no air?
    - BizarroLand 1y ago
      It's not about the air. Its about our fundamental squishyness. At 10g, a 150lb man would weigh 1,500 lbs. His heart isn't strong enough to move blood that suddenly weighs 90lbs/gallon that also has to push other blood that also weighs that same amount. His blood vessels, paper thin and easily torn under normal weight, suddenly have 10 times the amount of pressure to resist. He's fine for a few moments, jet pilots experience short bursts of 10g during flights quite often, occasionally more. Might pass out after 10-20 seconds, but after 10 minutes, his brain, starved of oxygen and squished under its own weight, ceases to function. His heart or his blood vessels rip and tear from the strain, and his body falls apart inside of its own skin. It's not pretty, but it would probably be a fairly painless way to go. Getting back to your question, his ability to breathe is not relevant under those situations. The absence of oxygen would accelerate his demise no more than it would under any other situation.