only 430 lightyears away

Except that Polaris is like 100 times farther than Alpha Centauri, weighing it at 430 ly, giver or take 100 ly.

 

To clarify, that's 4.06802721

Edited October 23, 200619 yr by alanschu

It would take us a blink of an eye if we ever decided to do some serious research into space travel. Quantum singularities, worms holes, warp travel, etc.

Edited October 23, 200619 yr by Dark_Raven

Well then you just need to be concerned with the exceptional gravitational pulls.

 

Quantum singularities are incomprehensibly massive, and will have incomprehensibly huge gravitational forces attached to them. Same goes for those worm holes.

 

As for warp travel, I'm still not convinced that you're going to be able to travel faster than light. While time dilation would let you get to Alpha Centauri in a relative instant (assuming you could travel roughly the speed of light, which would take incomprehensible amounts of energy), if you went there and back, 8.6 years would have elapsed on Earth (this is the foundation of the original Planet of the Apes movie).

 

 

Don't forget that science fiction is still fiction. Stuff like wormholes and whatnot are still entirely theoretical. I'm not sure how it'd actually be possible to bend and maniuplate space-time, and especially to keep things stable.

Warp space. I was referring to the concept of warping space, bending it not the Star Trek version of faster than light. It's impossible to go faster than light speed. The faster you go, the slower you will go. Something to do with mass.

 

The shortest distance between two points is a straight line or perhaps warping/folding space.

 

It's been a while since I read up on theoretical science, I am trying to recall this from memory.

Don't forget that science fiction is still fiction.  Stuff like wormholes and whatnot are still entirely theoretical.  I'm not sure how it'd actually be possible to bend and maniuplate space-time, and especially to keep things stable.

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Isn't there a theory someone's playing with about "moving space" from one point to another.. and then everything in that space moves with it... or some such.

I'm not familiar with it.

 

I have heard of the concept of folding space, which IIRC is a man made wormhole.

 

I'm not sure how one can expect to maniuplate whole chunks of space-time though.

holy cow. i turn my back for a day and it's turned into a star trek convention!

 

taks

Well, with the impending death of our planet in 5 billion years, we better think of something!

We could send a ship in a few years and still get there in time, given the five billion year time-limit. "

Time is eternal after all.

Actually it isn't. Scientists have theorize that in 70 billion years entropy would have destroyed all matter in the universe and at which point will be the end of time.

yeah, the so-called "heat death."

 

it's not so much that the matter will be destroyed (since that's not really possible according to conservation of energy principles), it's that it will be spread out over such a large area that the per unit volume energy/matter will be essentially zero. ugly scenario.

 

taks

I believe 2.3 Kelvin or so is the temperature everything will reach. Though, as you say, entropy doesn't destroy matter.

Edited October 24, 200619 yr by alanschu

Global Warming is irrelevant if we overstress the planet in general. The human cancer continues to grow.

Edited October 24, 200619 yr by Arkan

ah yes, those that think humans are a bane to earth. gotta love 'em. they'd probably prefer we just die out so bambi and all her (uh, his?) friends can thrive. i don't think they realize that, eventually, another species of intelligent animal will eventually sprout and, not surprisingly, encounter the same problems.

 

if i'm not mistaken, the delta between birth and death rates in all developed countries is dropping (i think russia is actually negative in this regard, i.e. more deaths than births). soon, this will be true for the planet as a whole. i'd be willing to bet this is a natural progression in which life limits itself to its own ability to support itself. rather, our population, and therefore need for resources, will cap at some point. add this to the fact that we become more efficient with time, i doubt such alarmism should be cause for concern.

 

taks

I think that that may be possible, but family planning seems to be correlated with economic security though.

 

THere isn't a huge amount of births in places like the USA and Canada, but Africa is quite high.

holy cow.  i turn my back for a day and it's turned into a star trek convention!

 

taks

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Science fiction usually ends up be coming science fact.

It does?

Yes

how so?

Space ships. They existed in the works of Jules Verne and HG Wells way before we ever actually made them. For one example.

Space ships. They existed in the works of Jules Verne and HG Wells way before we ever actually made them. For one example.

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And we now have communicators! Now just to get them to badge size.

It will come. First we had big clunky cell phones now we have these small ones.

Global Warming is irrelevant if we overstress the planet in general. The human cancer continues to grow.

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Hello Hanrahan. )