Semi-OT: We will go to Stars.

[Kamog]

There's a good introduction to quantum theory on the New Scientist site:
Scroll to the bottom of the page for the "New Scientist's Guide to the Quantum World" articles.
http://www.newscientist.com/hottopic...PBAPHMECG#ltst

[dogscoff]

OK, my 0.02.

-I know it's OT, but I believe we will crack FTL sooner or later. Probably much, much later.

-Once we've sent people to Mars and got a few off-Earth settlements within the solar system, colonising other stars isn't going to look that scary any more. The technology isn't really the problem- if you can fly to and colonise Mars/the moon, you've already overcome most of the technical obstacles for flying to and colonising another star system- it's just the scale and the timescale of the project that become prohibitive. With the X-prize and other tech advancements, those scales are going to look less and less daunting.

-There are plenty of stars within a (current) human lifetime's reach, and once the tech/costs become sensible people will go, even if it means a one-way trip. It's part of human nature to explore and to settle new land, and there will always be people with nothing to tie them to the planet of their birth. Look at the way the Americas were colonised (the second time)- by people disaffected with the society they lived in. The way things are going we'll be getting more and more of those in the years to come, I'm sure.

Of course, most people would probably wait until there was some proof that there are actually planets (although Eart-like ones are probably highly unlikely) at the other end of their journey, but advancing telescope tech will answer this question soon enough. As soon as we get proof of any interesting planet around another star, I reckon we'll be sending an unmanned probe. Of course, if telescopes were to pick up signs of a breathable planet around a nearby star, the world would be falling over itself for a closer look.

-I think human lifespans will be getting a LOT longer over the next few hundred years. Apparently the only reason that our cells stop replacing themselves (I.E. the only reason we age) is that our genes tell them to. Learn to switch off that command and we can stay young forever.

-I think cryogenics (for humans, anyway) is probably quite a long way off and I'm not sure it will be the answer anyway. Although obviously more expensive and complex, generation ships would be a more human solution, imho.

-Finally, we're overlooking the other great interstellar colonisation possibility: Sending NON-HUMAN colonists: An AI has a theoretical lifetime of... well... a very long time. And again, that technology is creeping up on us faster than most of us realise.

[ July 20, 2004, 08:43: Message edited by: dogscoff ]

[Ruatha]

About two light paricles going in the opposite direction.. they still have a relative speed between eachoter of the speed of light, and the speed of light isn't an absolute, it varies by the medium in which light travels.
When we talk of the speed of light we usually mean in vacuum.
You have to seperate the perceived speed from the relative speed between two objects.
From one of the particles it will seem that the particle is moving with the speed of light from the other, but from a observer standing besides the particles the distance between them will increase with twice the speed of light, as both are moving with the speed of light x 1, but the measured speed one of them is moving with relative to the other is the speed of light x1.
So none of them are moving with more than the speed of light, but the distance between them increases with the speed of light x 2.
So to distance oneself from earth with x 2 the speed of light, the earth must be accelerated to the speed of light ion the opposite direction...

Here is a really good explanation, I'll translate it later today or tomorrow:

Svar: Det är ett experimentellt faktum, att den ljusfart man mäter är en och densamma och oberoende av med vilken fart man rör sig i förhållande till ljuskällan eller med vilken fart ljuskällan rör sig i förhållande till en själv.

Ett vardagligt exempel på att det förhåller sig så är GPS, som bygger på gångtiden för signaler från satelliter på 22.000 kilometers höjd till en mottagare. Om ljusfarten berodde på ljuskällans (här: satelliternas) rörelse i förhållande till mottagaren, skulle mottagarens läge bara kunna bestämmas på ett par kilometer när med en GPS; som bekant är noggrannheten även hos en enkel GPS åtminstone tusen gånger bättre. Även en (tänkt) observatör som följde med den ena av dina två fotoner, skulle upptäcka att den andra fotonen rörde sig bort från honom/henne med en och samma ljusfart.

MEN: en observatör på stjärnan (eller på någon annan punkt som inte rör sig i förhållande till stjärnan) skulle mycket riktigt se de två fotonerna avlägsna sig FRÅN VARANDRA med dubbla ljusfarten. Observera dock, att det i detta fall inte är fråga om något som RÖR SIG med dubbla med ljusfarten. Vardera fotonen rör sig i förhållande till den andra fotonen eller i förhållande till observatören med ljusfarten och inget annat. Däremot ser observatören på stjärnan att AVSTÅNDET mellan de två fotonerna ökar på ett sådant sätt, att det är lika med dubbla ljusfarten gånger tiden sedan fotonerna skickades ut.

Man måste göra åtskillnad mellan RELATIV fart (ett föremåls fart i förhållande till en observatör, det vill säga en observatörs mätning av ändringen i föremålets avstånd per tid från honom/henne) och ÖMSESIDIG fart (en observatörs mätning av ändringen i avstånd per tid mellan två föremål).

[Aiken]

Originally posted by dogscoff:
OK, my 0.02.

It's part of human nature to explore and to settle new land, and there will always be people with nothing to tie them to the planet of their birth. Look at the way the Americas were colonised (the second time)- by people disaffected with the society they lived in. The way things are going we'll be getting more and more of those in the years to come, I'm sure.

Really? But what can you say about Antarctida? It's much more human friendly than Mars (plenty of air and water) but it's not colonized. Where are whose famous pioneers you're reffering to?
Another example - ocean bottom: whole new Earth to explore.

I don't belive into the exploring nature of humanity anymore. It's exhausted.

[Randallw]

Originally posted by Alneyan:
Ah, but the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy provides with the perfect answer to this problem. Let's see: there is nothing faster than light, save for bad news, whose speed is subject to completely different laws (*). Such are the words of wisdom contained in the Guide.

What do you build the bad news powered ships out of to stand the stress of travelling so fast?. I know, build it from the same material they use for little girls dolls. Since at the site of every plane crash there is a little girls doll miraculously unharmed the material must be the strongest known to man. .
But seriously. I read on a news site that Stephen Hawking has changed his mind about all matter being sucked into blackholes.
I found the following link
http://www.newscientist.com/news/news.jsp?id=ns99996151
Perusing the link shows me that I don't exactly understand the point, but my own point is that if Stephen Hawking can admit he was wrong perhaps Einstein might have been wrong about the limit to the speed of light. I am no physicist so I can make no argument, merely point out the possibility of a mistake.

[FLX]

I think that you're giving it a bad focus.
Why do WE have to be abe to reach stars?, if we can travel at 0'01·C, then none of us will reach Alpha Centauri... but if you can build a self sufficient vessel, with an habitable biosphere, maybe the gradchilds of our grandchilds could settle in a far distant world. The matter is NOT lifespan, a human individual cannot live forever and i hope we never reach that point, but the HUMAN beeings can, as specie .

[dogscoff]

Really? But what can you say about Antarctida? It's much more human friendly than Mars (plenty of air and water) but it's not colonized. Where are whose famous pioneers you're reffering to?
Another example - ocean bottom: whole new Earth to explore.

Antartctica is protected by loads of treaties and various international (dis)agreements, otherwise governments would have had people living there by the thousand and exploiting the resources decades ago, but point taken, and the same could be said of various deserts and other inhospitable places around the planet.

However there are plenty of dispossessed, persecuted, oppressed, evacuated or just plain unhappy people in the world who'd love to set up their own little societies in those places, given the opportunity- it's just that they are all too damn poor to (a) get there and (b) buy the equipment they'd need to survive once they do. Those people who could afford (a) and (b) are quite comfortable where they are, thanks very much. After all, if you can afford to colonise Antarctica, you can afford a cosy little house in the first world somewhere.

However this will change. The "richer" populations of the world are fragmenting into lots and lots of little subcultures and subsets of subcultures. As populations increase and with improved communications to bring like-minded folk together, even fairly obscure subGroups can number in the thousands and actually look and behave like real communities. What I'm getting around to is that some of these Groups will inevitably splinter from 'mainstream' society, being dissatisfied with the politics or economics they live under or whatever. And these are people from the rich parts of the world, so as the prices of space/ Antarctic colonisation come down they will actually have the money to go off and try to set up their own societies here and there.
I remember reading about one internet community a while back that was raising money to build an artificial island in the middle of some ocean and set up their own nation. I don't think they got very far, but they had a lot of members and it shows that the intent is there.

Hell, if you won the lottery, wouldn't you
be tempted to found your own little city-state of like-minded people somewhere? (Do a google for the "The World" project- a kind of real-life Magrathea off the coast of Dubai, where they are building designer paradise islands for celebrities.)

I don't belive into the exploring nature of humanity anymore. It's exhausted.

No it isn't, it's just that we don't have much left unexplored on this planet, so that instinct doesn't have much of an outlet now.

[Makinus]

dogscoff: about you idea of sendin AI controlled ships to other stars, you know a novel called "Songs of Distant Earth"?

In this novel Robotic ships carrying human genetic material are sent to other stars, where robots will create human beings "in vitro" and grow and teach them to adulthood, and then the humans would take control and colonize the world...

[Randallw]

Many years ago I read a novel where the humans had been transported by robot ship in vitro then grown at the new system. Later in the novel the female lead finds out the enemy humans on the other planet includes men. She wonders why the women on the other planet would do something as superflous as grow men when its more efficient to only raise women.

[Yimboli]

Correct me if I am mistaken: You cannot go faster than the speed of light through a *vacuum*. You can, however, go faster than the speed of light through a different medium, such as water. Water slows the speed of light significantly, and you can make a particle go faster than how fast light goes through water - and weird things happen.

Yes? No?