Pictures from Voyager I

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27 Oct 2012, 3:45 pm

Please see:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/galle ... 4&index=18

Voyager 1 is a little over 18.1 billion kilometers from home after 35 years traveling Out There. A light year is a little less than 10^13 kilometers so in about ten thousand years Voyager I will have travelled one light year

The message is clear to me. We are not going to another star anytime soon.

ruveyn

thomas81
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27 Oct 2012, 3:52 pm

damn i thought you meant this picture was taken recently. Its from 1990 according to the caption.

We won't ever go to a star soon, but then I don't think that was ever the point of voyager. It was intended as a time capsule of our existance in case the worst should ever happen to us. In fact we should probably build a few more voyagers and send them out in opposite directions just to increase the likliehood of them ever being found.

To be perfectly honest theres a reasonable chance voyager will never get to a star, unless the human race becomes extinct first. Whoever works out faster than light travel will catch up with it and put it in a museum or destroy it, unless ET gets to it first. Although i think the latter 2 outcomes are least likely. What will probably happen is we will annilhate ourselves in some god awful and pointless nuclear or biological war. Voyager will come to rest in some unpopulated star system where the memory of mankind will remain unknown and in obscurity for eternity.

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27 Oct 2012, 4:24 pm

thomas81 wrote:

There will never be any faster than light travel. Since there's no perfect vacuum between the solar systems either, a space ship travelling any faster than 0.2 c would be ripped apart by hydrogen and helium atoms.

thomas81
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27 Oct 2012, 4:30 pm

I think its silly to postulate about light speed or other equivalent 'mega-goals' never being acheivable. We have no inkling what will be understood or acheiveable, a few centuries down the line.

The laws of physics are full of loopholes and side doors that we are only just starting to fathom. Don't rule anything out.

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27 Oct 2012, 4:43 pm

thomas81 wrote:

Science isn't magic. The laws of physics are above us and not the other way around.

We'll probably be able to send an unmanned probe into another solar system within a generation in a thousand years time or so, but travelling at the speed of light (in a space ship with an infinite mass that won't be harmed by space friction) is pure sci-fi.

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27 Oct 2012, 4:59 pm

Kurgan wrote:

thomas81 wrote:

Science, and what we call the laws of physics, are human constructions. They are estimates, models. And our scientific theories in 500 years will look much different than those of today. There are a few plausible ways an object with mass may be able to travel at speeds faster than light. The door has not been totally shut on faster than light travel as you suggest.

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27 Oct 2012, 5:05 pm

blackelk wrote:

Kurgan wrote:

thomas81 wrote:

The equations used to explain them are human constructions (i.e. approximations), but ultimately, everything is governed by physical laws that can be represented mathematically. What precisely makes the door still open?

Kelvin's heat death theory is roughly 150 years old. The theory on how the sun is a star not much different from other stars and that other stars have their own planets is more than 400 years old. Scholars knew that the earth was spherical more than 2000 years ago. Finally, the evolution theory (and the belief that all life originated from a primitive organism in the ocean) is 2,500 years old. We have a lot of the answers to the good old sci-fi questions in the palm of our hands right now.

Last edited by Kurgan on 27 Oct 2012, 5:12 pm, edited 1 time in total.

blackelk
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27 Oct 2012, 5:10 pm

Kurgan wrote:

blackelk wrote:

Kurgan wrote:

thomas81 wrote:

What makes the door shut?

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27 Oct 2012, 5:13 pm

^ Agrees with poster above.

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27 Oct 2012, 5:15 pm

Kurgan wrote:

thomas81 wrote:

I never said Science was magic. All I am saying is that the laws of the physics, and the universe in which they govern will be significantly better understood by us in 100 years or more than they are at the moment and we will therefore be better equipped to manipulate the nuances in between those laws than we are at the moment.
In much the same way that flight and supersonic flight was once the stuff of fancy.

That isn't magic, it is just an inevitability of human inquisition.

Moreover the law that light speed is unobtainable by a spacecraft is built on the pre-supposition that the craft is composed of matter. What if you could figure a way to construct it out of anti-matter?

Last edited by thomas81 on 27 Oct 2012, 5:19 pm, edited 1 time in total.

blackelk
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27 Oct 2012, 5:15 pm

Kurgan wrote:

blackelk wrote:

Kurgan wrote:

thomas81 wrote:

All those things you mentioned have been improved on or altered in some way significantly.

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27 Oct 2012, 5:16 pm

blackelk wrote:

Kurgan wrote:

blackelk wrote:

Kurgan wrote:

thomas81 wrote:

What makes the door shut?

The theory on general relativity, as well as friction, the fact that immortality in humans is impossible and that for a wormhole to connect distant parts of the universe, it needs to be opened on both sides.

I wish by no means to offend anyone who believes interstellar travel to be possible, but there's very little evidence of it being theoretically possible.

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27 Oct 2012, 5:20 pm

Kurgan wrote:

blackelk wrote:

Kurgan wrote:

blackelk wrote:

Kurgan wrote:

thomas81 wrote:

What makes the door shut?

General relativity? You mean the theory that is at the very least, incomplete, and breaks down at many different points? Including light speeds? Actually, that may be special relativity.

I agree, the mechanisms of faster than light travel are highly speculative at this moment, and nothing more. That still doesn't mean they will always remain so.

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27 Oct 2012, 5:21 pm

Wait a second, human immorality is impossible? How do you figure that? You're thinking way too small here.

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27 Oct 2012, 5:24 pm

blackelk wrote:

Kurgan wrote:

blackelk wrote:

Kurgan wrote:

thomas81 wrote:

All those things you mentioned have been improved on or altered in some way significantly.

The foundations they're built on are the same. We have yet to see evidence that anything travels faster than light or that anything can enter a wormhole without being destroyed (or that wormholes exist).

Interstellar travel is wishful thinking; the thought that civilizations in space will never meet, that fascinating novels like Dune will always be fiction or that this is the only solar system that's "ours" among billions of trillions of other systems is disturbing, I understand that.

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27 Oct 2012, 5:28 pm

blackelk wrote:

Kurgan wrote:

blackelk wrote:

Kurgan wrote:

blackelk wrote:

Kurgan wrote:

thomas81 wrote:

What makes the door shut?

A lot of theories are incomplete, but puzzle piece after puzzle piece is being put in place as we speak. We should not rejoice too soon, but if there's any evidence that anything may travel faster than light in the near future, then our approximations of the world around us need to be rewritten.

Last edited by Kurgan on 27 Oct 2012, 5:34 pm, edited 1 time in total.

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