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What if solving interstellar travel isn't about figuring out faster than light propulsion, but how to extend our own lives? (self.askscience)

submitted 1 year ago by danhab99 to c/askscience

25 comments fedilink hide all child comments

So I was day dreaming and I caught a thought. What if what we understand about physics is actually all there is to understand? What if you objectively cannot move faster than the speed of light because you can't do the time traveling things necessary. This would mean that the only way to travel amongst the stars would be to extend our lives so that a 5000 year trip at the speed of light would represent like 10% of our lifespans. Travel would be attainable but like the way it was when we were sailing ships to the new world.

That's just one practical solution I could think of to stellar travel. Does anyone else have a practical idea?

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[–] [email protected] 20 points 1 year ago (2 children)

You are behind the times on physics advancements buddy! Thanks to the recently discovered concept of relativistic time dilation, a 5000 light year trip at the speed of light will take literally 0 seconds of your lifespan. More practically, travelling in a starship that accelerates at 1G to the halfway point, turns around and decelerates to the destination, you can reach ridiculous distances within a single human lifetime:

shipboard time	distance	earth time
1 year	.263 LY	1.05 Y
2 years	1.13 LY	2.37 Y
3 years	2.82 LY	4.35 Y
4 years	5.80 LY	7.50 Y
5 years	10.9 LY	12.7 Y
10 years	166 LY	168 Y
15 years	2199 LY	2201 Y
20 years	28.8 kLY	28.8 kY
25 years	380 kLY	380 kY
50 years	149 GLy	149 GY
100 years	22.8 ZLy	22.8 ZY

This is the formula to calculate the distance and time:

x(τ) = c**2/a [cosh(τ a/c) - 1]
t(τ) = c/a sinh(τ a/c)

a = 9.8 m/s
c = 3e8 m/s

The formula is hyperbolic, which is why travel distance is not a linear relation of travel time. E.g. given τ = 10 years:

x = 3e8**2/9.8 * (cosh(60*60*24*365*10/2 * 9.8/3e8) - 1) * 2 / (3e8 * 60*60*24*365)
  = 166 light years
t = 3e8/9.8 * sinh(60*60*24*365*10/2 * 9.8/3e8) * 2 / (60*60*24*365)
  = 168 years

[–] danhab99 3 points 1 year ago (3 children)

Wait so the only thing limiting our interstellar travel is money? That's awesome!!!

[–] Aux 18 points 1 year ago

No, the only limit to everything in our lives and in the universe in general is... Energy! Energy is the real currency of the world.

[–] spacedancer 5 points 1 year ago

That, and figuring out how to travel even just a significant fraction of the speed of light.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago (1 children)

But what about the bit about not hitting anything whilst travelling at that speed? Even a speck of space dust would do massive damage at those speeds, right?

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 year ago

Oh yeah, it's like flying the wrong way down the tube of the Large Hadron Collider. The tougher challenge though is like @[email protected] said maintaining 1G acceleration. Following the rocket equation, which is logarithmic, a 50 year multi-stage rocket will be bigger than the universe itself, even if you use some kind of nuclear propulsion 10000 times more efficient than our chemical rockets.