Is Interstellar Travel Impossible?
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- čas přidán 3. 05. 2024
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Space is pretty deadly. But is it so deadly that we’re effectively imprisoned in our solar system forever? Many have said so, but a few have actually figured it out.
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Possible solution #2. Increase human lifespan such that interstellar travel is just a matter of making enough Netflix content for the trip.
Netflix content is already dire
All I'll need is Minecraft and I'm set for the next few millennia
Netflix better improve the quality in that case or it is not going to work.
Exactly. We just need to find a cure for the ageing and cure for cancer.
The ageing is just a useless evolutionary mechanism from our past
Not to mention Video Games. VR especially. There is a reason the Enterprise had Holodecks.
One important thing that isn't brought up in this video: any ship travelling at relativistic speeds will need to turn around and decelerate while in the interstellar medium (or else they'll just zip past the destination). This complicates designs that involve only forward-facing shielding.
You don't need to turn around to decelerate, you just have a way to direct the engine thrust ahead of you.
It simplifies the shilding problem: Your torch will clear the way ahead of you.
@@JohnDlugosz For at least half the journey anyway, depending on the powerplant.
On the other hand the exhaust from whatever propulsion system you're using should be able to provide some level of protection, no?
@@Siddingsby yes some theoretical propulsion systems even rely on the conversion of relativistic collisions with the ship as a means of converting that energy into propulsion, taking what would be the equivalent of space air resistance / friction into a means of propulsion, such as the way a propeller uses air friction to induce sustained flight propulsion, as the propellers drag acts to pull air. But these are extremely theoretical and require high energy collisions so you’d have to get to that speed first.
Given how many times ancient humans sailed into the ocean with little chance of finding anything, I think we'd try interstellar travel regardless of the risk
The scales are vastly incomparable and mostly incomprehensible.
@@spaceman9599 Exactly. The distances are incomprehensible, so we would underestimate the risk and go anyway
@@Evan.the.Butler That is nonsense. Fact is with modern science we know the exact risks but we will go anyway. Back in ye old days they knew the risks but to a lesser extent.
We go because we are explorers and we go because we can.
I really hope AI will be used for good to solve this problem in the future
The problem is that if you compare crossing the Atlantic to traveling to Alpha Centauri, then going to the moon is like... reaching across your table for a beer. It's hugely out of scale to what we expect for the 'next hardest' trip. It takes our current spacecraft decades to reach Pluto - and Alpha C is 7700x further than that.
I think the best solution is that intelligent life is so rare that even if others are out there they’re so separated by space and time that we will never interact and so we’re still effectively alone.
Don’t kid yourself ! We are 🖖🏼👽NOT ALONE ! And there are large populations “out there” in space ! We are just barely out of the caves and still fighting each other like a bunch of toddlers over a toy or who gets a cookie first ! As HUMANITY MATURES INTO ADULTHOOD so will our TECHNOLOGY ! Just hope we don’t blow 💥up the PLANET before we Stop being so stupid 🙀👵🏻😱🎄🗳️💙🌵❤️✌🏻🇺🇸
@@brummyuk2151do you think we will get to another billion years with the state of climate change?
@@nyko9631in a billion years the oceans will gave boiled away because the sun is getting larger and hotter at a rate of 10% every billion years. Estimates I've seen are about another half billion years before the sun makes the earth uninhabitable. As far as man made climate change the earth will recover from us if we were to disappear. Deep time wipes away everything.
@@nyko9631
"do you think we will get to another billion years with the state of climate change?"
Yes, absolutely. The trend is to go green. Here in California, we're 65% zero emission power, and 25% of all vehicles currently registered are EVs.
Even the worse case scenario in climate change doesn't wipe out humanity. We would have to move inland a bit, that's all. But I think we'll sidestep the worst of it because we're getting rid of fossil fuel for power and transportation.
We’re going to end up just living in space instead of a actual planet
I love how even in interstellar space, we still have to have a spacecraft that's "aerodynamic".
The only time aerodynamic spacecraft makes sense is if the ship is capable of travelling at near light speed without blowing up from space dust. At those speeds while travelling through the interstellar medium, the gas would be like air and csuse drag on the ship, slowing it down.
@@69Kazeshini true. You also have to consider atmospheric entry/flight for landing or takeoff.
A flying box, or anything that looks like it was cobbled together in a junkyard - even if it's rock solid construction - violates the rule of cool. If the Mandalorian wouldn't be caught dead flying it, back to the drawing board! 😎
Aerodynamics would help attempt to deflect matter Instead of taking the brunt impact
Aerodynamic is also matterdynamic; it has a better chance even if that chance is marginal, of deflecting a solid object away than a flat surface..
The irony of having to be aware of things so small whilst travelling through something so vast
You'd probably want to add lasers on booms pointing in front to vaporise dust before you run into it. You'd still get the kinetic energy of the grain, but it would at least be spread out, and thus do less damage.
Space doesn't exist, it's the government playing mental gymnastics to distract you from the truth.
A couple problems here-
1: It takes time to reach relativistic speeds. So side shielding is unavoidable
2: The front of the ship is the engines when you want to slow down.
The flare from the front engine brakes could take over the role of destroying particles and atoms as the danger gets less as you slow down
@@ekoreko4271 I'm pretty sure a meteor slamming into the exhaust at the speed of light will easily penatrate the engine
Which is why the ISV Venture Star from Avatar had the best solution. High powered laser from earth hits the massive solar sail to accelerate by 1.5G along with matter anti matter collision propulsion. That high powered massive laser vaporizes anything in the immediate trajectory. Once at cruising speed the ship flips and the mirror array extended thousands of miles ahead of the ship to block incoming particles. To slow down the ship just rotates 180 degrees and fires the engines
@@jaythekid4728 if we are going full fantasy. Then the Enterprise with warp engines and a deflector array will work just fine.
@@benhoffman6606
ISV Venture Star is Hard SF. It is based on The Valkyrie, a Hard SF spaceship created by Charles Pelligrino and physicist Jim Powell (Powell was at Brookhaven National Laboratory at the time). There's an entry for it on "Atomic Rockets" that you can look up (we can't put links here) and also wikipedia.
Light sails are hard sf, matter/antimatter rockets are hard sf.
The hypothetical Venture Star has another feature, a "Liquid droplet radiator" that acts to not only cool the spacecraft but to absorb and deflect dust particles etc.
Fermi was talking about the lack of radio signals, not visitors. Another danger of high speed, interstellar travel is the blue shift of light coming toward the ship from source that lies in the direction the ship is moving. At high enough speeds, the blue shifted light will effectively strike the ship as deadly gamma rays.
According to Herbert Yorke, Fermi "followed up with a series of calculations on the probability of earthlike planets, the probability of life given an earth, the probability of humans given life, the likely rise and duration of high technology, and so on. He concluded on the basis of such calculations that we ought to have been visited long ago and many times over."
@@Kivikesku perhaps we have! lol! (sry to bring up there paranormal/out there stuff! :P )
@@Kivikesku did he not consider how difficult intersteller travel is though?
how do you know they communicate using radio? And, a radio signal sent from across the galaxy would take 1000s upon 1000s of years to reach us, and may have become far too scattered to be decoded.
@@dosomestuff1949 I don't know. I was merely commenting on what Fermi reportedly said back in the 1950's.
I love feeling like he's about to say "spacetime" at the end. "He's doing it. Here it comes. And.... there it is."
Cool avatar. Who inspired you ?
Spacetime is the safeword
Was it good for you?
Feels good everytime. One of the most satisfying parts of every episode 😊
No spoiler alert 🚨 huh 🤔
Reminds me of that quote of The Expanse with the people building the generation ship to go to Alpha Centauri: "When all the air you'll have is what you bring with you, the loss tolerances are going to be tighter."
Such a fantastic book series and the TV series didn't disappoint. I appreciate both forms' attention to detail!
psst it was Tau Ceti ;)
Can't believe it was the Mormons that funded the Navoo
@@nuru666 All we need now is the Epstein Drive. Come on baby!!
@@Marth667 no fusion power.
It seems there are too much barriers for intersteller travels...but the positive part is that, we ourselves are also shielded by the same from alien invasion
Could anyone in 1923 have envisioned the internet? Technology advances, begetting more advances and in a century, perhaps one of our descendants is sitting on Centauri having a refreshing drink.
I believe some people could. Radio was already in use by that time and first transmission was in 1896 so logically it was imagined in preceding 50 years minimally. The problem with faster than light travel is that we have never measured any matter travel that has traveled faster than the speed of light. The only thing shows the potential of faster than light travel is data via quantum entanglement of atoms. I believe any travel that we accomplish would be one way arc time migration. A combination of cryogenic hibernation and working with AI in shifts: hibernation 90% of time on voyage for all humans on ship. would be the only way. Psychologically I am not sure we survive. Currently the top speed we have achieved is 0.05% the speed of light. With massive technological improvements addressing all the challenges of getting a huge space arc supporting a couple 1000 people, plants, animals, and water to seed a colony to say 1% the speed of light we still have a journey lasting well over 400 years earth time to get anywhere. My opinion is that Star Trek like interstellar travel is likely as impossible as backwards time travel. I think the math suggests that as well. If our species is around and doesn’t experience another “dark ages” for say 10,000 years then maybe. But if may take another additional 100,000 years of prosperity that human then start to consider the eventuality that we won’t be able to extend the life of our sun or planet and start making the huge investment to get to a younger star with a habitable planet in orbit around it.
It'll never happen. Science fiction clap trap. We will destroy this planet through war. We are a terrible infliction on ourselves and we will self destruct. Crazy.
It would be pretty ironic if our ship arrived at the next nearest star looking like Oumuamua because of all the interstellar particles. One habited planet will say "hey, that's an odd looking asteroid!"
Yes fellow human, it was certainly an asteroid.
@@aceofswords5741 🤣🤣🤣
Hold on, we've just seen an oddly looking long asteroid a few years ago, entering and leaving the solar system...
@@cmdrTremyss you're onto something!!
nice comment
You know what's even harder than accelerating to relativistic speeds? Stopping. All of the energy required to slow down needs to come from the spacecraft itself rather than a ground based source.
True that
Absolutely, fortunately you accelerated with an engine capable of getting you to that speed. So unless you were a complete fool, you presumably left enough fuel onboard to slow you down again.
Or you send a machine ahead that shoots a laser beam at you before arrival
@@Quickshot0 What was implied is that when you leave, you can be accelerated without using too much of your fuel. One solution is to use stellasers (big lasers).
The solution to this problem is to send lighter probes in advance so that they can build stellasers at your destination, which isn't easy obviously but would work.
You’re forgetting about gravitational slingshots. They can be used to slow a spacecraft down.
Some of these issues is why I think it's supremely important to develop and grow AI that can travel for us by proxy, or ideally transport a method to seed us. I sincerely think it's an important step on our "evolution" and propagation of the species.
I had similar idea when I was a teen still had much to learn at that time but the premise was we human weren't actually the only humans we were once part of a great galactic empire that was super advanced but fractured and devolved into in fighting and war. The old method of travel was by bending space via gates from point to point like opening doors however the rulers of old sabotage the gates causing them shut down and drift off into space and be lost. Our solar system was the site a great battle (fighting over new colonizable world) then the gates shut off stranding everyone the fighting stopped as they realised they were stuck. Rather than fighting til the bitter end because they knew reinforcements weren't coming they came to the negotiating table deciding to settle different regions of the planet according to thier natural habitats they grew up on elsewhere in the galaxy. Thus the different ethnicities of today are all descended of remnants of the different humans from that battle (tying how all cultures have similar stories of visitors from sky despite not actually being in contact with each other during those time period's) anyway as time went things were lost and forgotten and we basically had to reset from zero and flash forward to where the real story kicks off and the humans of "today" travel the stars by using AI to navigate seed ships. A humans mind is stored in a storage device in the ship. The ship has "Matter stored" in a protected and shielded area where it kept human well, sludge is the non technical term it was some what like a cancerous organic mass that endlessly replicated on itself and the AI would cultivate it during the trip to "keep it fresh" and that exposing it to radiation encourage this growth upon arrival the AI prints a replicate of a human using the "Sludge" set out by the specifications of the stored humans data. Repairs and ship maintenance would be carried out by human crew being brought out of storage and temporarily inhabiting machine bodies. It was supposed to be the tale of one of these ships ment for seeding of a new world that upon arriving at their destination discover the planet has weird unnatural structures and they come to find out its the ruins of another civilisation of humans that the unnatural structures were the remnants of their civilisation one of the "capital worlds" of the previous human empire to be more accurate and that they all died off and unlike us they'd kept a better record of what happened the original language of humans being Babylonian script or chicken scratch as some call it. They even find that the "Sludge" is just a reinvention of old genetic tech the previous empire used for medical care (growing replacement organs) and also planet seeding as well in an underground and seal off area they find someone had been trying to preserve previous knowledge by carving information into the walls. The previous humans had problem with genetic diversity when colonising new planet's so they "grow" human cattle primitive humans and leave them on the planet to adapt the colonists would take trips to the world to "mingle with locals" while the gates were constructed a process taking decades the offspring would be born with traits resistant to the new environment effectively seeding the world. You also learn that humans looked vastly different in appearance to what they are today being kinda like the "Roswell grey aliens" but more human looking. There was another chamber that they found where someone perhaps the same person was leaving a detailed account of the begin of the war it talks of the growing need for "Purity" and new method to their expansion being needed then jumps ahead to mention of "Pale ones" staging a rebellion on their frozen hellworld and another about the "green ones" in their fungal jungle and the dark ones on their twice sun kissed world also rebelling and the empires strategy was to convince all the rebel factions that they were out to get each other too turning them against each through espionage and subterfuge and it worked only they didn't count on the fact that even though the rebels now hated and fought they hated the empire more and that even mid battle if the empire swooped in to mop up resistant they'd stop fighting each other long enough to stomp imperial troops into the muck then resume killing each other. With the final result being the gates being shut off to "Preserve the heart of the empire" which this place wasnt it so they were sacrificed as well id planned on making series with first being exploration of the world, archaeology some interior politics and other mysteries the trip back and learning they'd were being followed. Book two being the sharing information and the implication their may be other humans like us out there and humans not like us with a huge generation chip on their shoulder and what to do about OUR home being tagged by the follower. Book three I never got around to considering I might take it back up, but you reminded me off it sorry for the long message.
The one and most important thing he didn't talk about is the energy required to accelerate and decelerate to and from 0.2c. It basically takes all the energy the earth receives from the sun in two seconds to do the space shuttle. Good luck storing that somehow In a space shuttle sized space ship. It's probably impossible. Sad but true.
You see, I love this idea. People always talk about the Fermi Paradox and I have to be that guy that says, “Maybe it’s because it takes too much effort to travel interstellar?”
yea i mean for 1 even developing complex life doesnt guarantee intelligence tool based life(remember the dinos were dominating for hundreds of millions of years and im sorry to the birds of today but neither them nor a tyrannosaurus rex or stegasaurus were ever gonna figure out particle physics), so you have to have enough mass extinctions to get the right organisms but not enough to fully wipe everything, And then even if you get through all that and every other factor they might just realize how much energy this takes and just stick to their planet / solar system till the natural end
@@JubioHDXimagine being that lame of a species.
The Fermi Paradox isn't
necessarily viable.
;)
"Everybody stayed home" has got to be the most depressing solution to the Fermi paradox ever...
I guess the most promising concept for space travel is to wait until another planetary system is close enough to make the jump. When Gliese-710 for instance will pass the Solar system in 1.3 million years, Light will need about three weeks to reach the star, and a 0.2c space ship will go there within months. Even though Gliese-710 may not be a worthwhile destination, at least it might carry us to other places. Douglas Adams knew it already: we will be hitchhiking through the Galaxy.
Considering we have created a civilization with a foresight of 4 years... i dunno
Oh yes of course, Gliese-710 for instance, one my favourites…
@@ernestoa.jimenez3206 Not to mention the level of social and political cooperation required to do that. I mean we couldn't even get everybody to cooperate on how to handle a pandemic. There's no way we could get everybody on the same page with handling interstellar travel. Everything from traveling there to who owns the resources when we get there would be a catastrophe.
@@ernestoa.jimenez3206 4 years? That's quite generous of you.
@@ernestoa.jimenez3206 more like 4 months
My tip would be to make the majority of the ship less shielded and just shield the main crew compartments, thereby eliminating mass by keeping other bays unaccessable by us and not as shielded from rays. We are already talking about locking up humans in a tiny ship for decades so why not shrink things a bit more to allow for everything to be possible
Because insanity
Not sure if that would be a good idea
Making things even smaller just makes your crew more likely to reach their destination insane
Maybe virtual reality can help to make things seen bigger but still you would reach your objective with an insane crew full of cancer (and if you are really unluck they might be sterile with means that all that effort was for nothing)
surely by the time we can send people into interstellar space we have medical technology good enough to takeout the health implications of cancer
@@valletasNo way we will travel large apartment for crew entertainment. Only way here is hybernation-like devices
@@pocoxiaomi5182 that would be the best but wouldnt solve the cancer and possible sterile problem
At the moment cryogenics is purely pseudoscience but if we do find a way to induce a coma or even semi-death and reliably bring people out of it it can work because then we would be able to send people on lower speeds since time isnt a problem anymore but im not sure if something like that is even possible and for now remains in the realm of fiction
Insight from nature - I found this moment in a video about a smooth-claw snapping shrimp creating a vacuum bubble under water. I wondered, to what extent would the idea of percussive action in a vacuum lend itself to the creation of a possible "bubble" in space potentially to be used in travel. Perhaps at speeds unknown with the potential effect of deterring micrometeorites. I realize sound needs a medium, however, many great ideas come from observing nature. Any and all thoughts are welcome.
If a shrimp can create such a thing under immense pressure, surely the concept is worth a thought beyond first dismissals.
I love that in order for us to leave Earth, we'd basically have to build a second smaller Earth, drive it to some other planet, and then spend a lot of time making that place more Earth-like before we step outside.
I *really* love to think that everyone else in the galaxy just said, "Meh... Too much effort", and opened another beer.
Traveling takes time.. could we create a sustained shield that we could project in front of us that could prevent a critical impact from particles in our path?
A slower ship that can store enough energy and renew through interstellar matter or planned way points would provide time for fermentation and civi!ized discussion..
Cheers!!
you may have solved fermi paradox
Why would you love to think any of those things? Are you nihilistic or just lazy?
And your talking time scales that we would surely evolve in some fashion...what would we look like? Unless we slove aging process or hibernate. 🤯
That’s not true at all.🙄🙄🤦♂️🤡
It's nice to see an episode, once in a while, in which most of us can wrap our heads around the physics without bending space-time with our futile concentration.
Speak for yourself.
@@Seymour-Butts_666 you might want to have that agressivity problem checked. That comment of yours was really useless, irrelevant and lame.
Wow, thanks Matt for providing this very interesting and informative video. I’m now going to be watching and listening to your CZcams site.
the distances are so great that even if traveling with the speed of light it would take a years to reach even the closest stars. Plus in the middle of road you have to start deccelerate or you just miss your target
Just to be pedantic, if you actually travelled AT the speed of light, for you the journey would take no time at all. That's something they didn't cover here, if you go fast enough the journey time is hugely reduced.
A distance of 4 ly is not prohibitively large.
@@volos_olympusyes it is.
@@geraldbutler5484 nop
If the target is an entire star system then that`s a pretty big target. Say you want to send a probe to Alpha Centauri and have it do a few flybys of any planets that may be there, take some pictures and other data then return to a point where transmitting the data back to Earth is possible. Does a thirty-year time scale seem plausible assuming some developments in AI and propulsion systems? Consider how long things like the Voyager probes have been operating.
"The universe may be trying to kills us, but it's not trying quite hard enough..." I just love that line. It makes me want to say, "I see you and raise you." Challenge accepted.
Universe: "Oh, a wise guy, huh?"
(Borg cubes begin dropping out of subspace)
@@stevenscott2136 😄
"The universe is like a casino: the house always wins." (I came up with that. ☺)
And once we solved it, we can easily traverse the galaxy in no problem. At this point, new physics may find loopholes in relativity and thus allow for FTL travel, almost like how the sci-fi novel, "To Sleep in the Sea of Stars" did.
“On a long enough time line, the survival rate for everyone drops to zero.” In a cosmic blink of an eye, humanity will be gone and no one will remember us.
You just gotta fold a piece of paper in half and stick a pencil through it.
There you go 😂
Sorry for being out of topic but been watching this guy for so long that I just noticed he's getting older.
With the way the world's going now, I'm pretty sure that the theory about civilizations annihilating themselves before reaching interstellar travel is true.
I think that's probably THE dumbest idea. Social civilizations are complicated, and wars or whatever that break out will always have survivors somewhere.
It's just scientific fear mongering with the idea that we should all be "global citizens" or face collapse. We're afraid to admit that the aliens would also have countries with borders, and probably a space America too.
It's not so bad. We're still breathing. For now.
@@bishopvida Indeed. Someone I went to school with died recently, in a very flippant way and at no fault of their own - we are very fortunate with every daily opportunity we're given.
@@piterpraker3399 preach spodermaen
No, it isn't. It isn't even true of US.
I loved the Oregon trail in space motif.
I think there could be a spin off to the every one stayed home answer. Every one stayed home but sent out A.I. and complex machines to do the exploring and expansion for them.
Vieyra died of dysentery ☠️
I was literally just talking to a friend about Oregon Trail today and then found this video! Loved it too. I also recently stumbled across a fun sci-fi book series on your premise that you might enjoy, called "We are Legion (We are Bob)."
Then we get some skynet type AI who lands on the planet and starts it own species on the planet, and decides we aren't worth sharing with or even keeping around anymore lol.
Thank you! Very informative, I had no idea.
I love "The universe may be trying to kill us, but it's not trying quite hard enough." We're so stubborn even the universe itself can't do anything about it.
Seems that interstellar travel is a lot like living in Australia. Sure everything here is trying to kill you, just not that hard...
A good portion of the latter part of the journey to Alpha Cen, would be turning the ship and its protective shield away from the destinations in order to begin slowing down with its propulsion system. Hopefully the ejected mass or energy would be enough to deflect I SM during the deceleration.
Good point. So you's have to have a shield on the back too, with the motor poking through. Or somehow move the ice shield to the back with robots that could withstand the radiation. Sounds impossible again.
just calculate the decel ahead of time, while decellerating before youve actually reached your destination would slow down the ship farther and farther from relativistic speeds, thereby taking a little longer to reach the destination, you'd simply have to find a balance between prolonging the journey and safely stopping the ship with only the redirected thrust of the rear engines, therefore not requiring us to turn the whole ship backwards and compromise the shielding.
Depends on the propulsion. If onboard then you might be able to actually create a plasma shield it. On the other hand, on board propulsion requires tech we simply do not have yet or for the near future. Better to leave the engine here.
Wouldn’t the deceleration also need to take into account how much humans can handle g-force levels? Pretty sure no human has ever endured months of 7gs let alone years
This was always one of the things I had the hardest time with in the most recent Battle Star: Galactica series. They were space faring to the extreme, but couldn't cure cancer.
🤣 that always made me chuckle as well
Because they've this obnoxious idea to make humans not too different from current ones. Like normal people, but travelling in space instead of an airplane. Imagine if in the 1500s they'd have imagined how travel in space would be like. They would have imagined a flying caravel with space sailors or stuff like that. Computers? What they're?
The space-faring I can see, because they had jump drives that ignored all the big radiation hazards. But given the Cylons could make virtually indistinguishable human-like variants, you'd figure they'd have to have enough biological knowledge to cure cancer.
Those are completry different areas of science and techno,ogy, why assume they would be more advanced in every area there are lots of complex factors affecting how science and technology develop. Also cancer" isn't a single thing anyway, maybe they could cure some cancer we can't but not that particular one, maybe it was caught too late.
It's space cancer, way worse.
This is a fascinating topic explained in a cheerful and illuminating manner. Thank you very much.
There are more "dull" points 2 consider.
- How much would it cost? (Now we've a new Moon program 2 compare).
- How long would it take 2 build? (International Space Station cost 150 billion USD &was in construction from late 1980s).
- How long do the complex machines stay operational? (A Stone Age axe isn't an example).
- How many relativistic speed spacecraft have we built?
We've got a long way to go before we even think of traveling to other stars. First we would need to master livable habitats on moons within the solar system as well as space habitats that can survive the dangers of the solar system. After that, we can start on figuring out how to build sustainable super-stations outside of the solar system that can survive the dangers of the ISM. By that point, we'd hopefully have the technology to reverse genetic damage from radiation, at which point we could embark on longer journeys to other stars.
This is a problem to solve a few centuries from now at the very earliest... and that is assuming we are not stupid enough to nuke ourselves into extinction first.
You got that Right With Putin talking Nukes!
Most of the issues could be resolved if we could transfer out consciousness into machines. A majority of issues that come from space travel would be moot if we were no longer flesh and blood.
@@failegion7828 Transferring the human brain to a machine is another story from the land of sci-fi fairytales. It simply cannot be done. While we can make very complex computers with more information that we can hold in our brains they are not going to be able to be human. This is not my opinion. There are popular science books written by brain sciences and computer scientists on the subject by scientists.
@@nickames3808 yk if you thought hard enough the possibility of humans going extinct through nukes is less than us getting obliterated by aliens in a surprise attack.
Dude we build space ships with super thin haules. They are not made to do the job. I know the problem of enough speed to get to orbit and can only get 2% payload. But the ships can be built in space. And we need to use atomic energy. Chemical rockets are stupid for the job.
Have a couple questions on this one:
- Could relativistic collisions be harnessed as a secondary fuel source?
- Could humans be restricted to a small part of the craft that shields against cosmic rays, while wearing protective equipment to perform maintenance on the rest of the ship's interior?
I think the second idea runs into the same problem as spacewalks: Personal equipment couldn't possibly give any kind of real protection in that environment, so unless those non-crew parts of the ship are also significantly shielded, you're consigning your maintenance crew to death by space cancer.
Just use remote controlled robots. Problem solved.
I'm glad it wasn't just me. Maybe a good ol bussard ramjet
@@TheRogueWolf If the level of technology needed to take on an actual interstellar journey was present, there would definitely be maintenance robots.
The real question is will the radioactive space robots turn on the crew?
I don't think relativistic collisions as a fuel source could work, because any collisions would sap forward momentum from the ship, and it shouldn't be possible to extract more energy from those collisions than would be required to offset that momentum reduction. Sort of like how you couldn't have a boat that's powered by waterwheels sailing upstream.
There is a Star Trek Next Generation episode where they send what they call a soliton wave from an array for a ship to “ride” at faster than light speeds. The problem was it kept building up speed and energy and was threatening to destroy the very planet they were sending the ship to! The laser array early in this video reminded of that 👍
Larer array (or better microwave array) cannot drive anything higher than c, only alteration of space time can do that. You are on to something with the soliton analogy - equally, we cannot do that yet - we'd need serious gravity manipulation to do so.
This is an excellent essay. A book of like content shook the foundations of my beliefs. "Galaxies United" by Olivia Whitestone
"... the notion that physicists are less childish than regular people is insulting" that is awesome, and t-shirt worthy
I feel that humans even going to Mars is like an intelligent freshwater fish trying to move itself from a lake in Illinois to one in Japan.
This episode is based on getting there as fast as possible, but doesn't deal with getting there "period." There are a lot of SF stories about "generation ships," where a large object, say a hollowed out asteroid/moonlet is sent to the stars slowly, over multiple lifetimes.
The sheer mass of the object would take care of collisions with small objects and radiation.
For me the only way is to consider negative mass in GR like in Bondi extension of GR or like in bimetric gravity. Negative mass does not exist but it can be substituted by negative energy. Negative energy exists. Casimir effect has negative energy, two opposite charges also, two masses interacting gravitationally also. In Italy there is an ongoing experiment aimed at measuring the tiny repulsive gravitational effect of 2 Casimir plates. It is called 'Archimedes' experiement and it's done by INFN and CNR.
Dreaming of things like flying through wormholes is probably what inspired most physicists to become physicists!
We had physicists before we conceived of wormholes. It isn't wormholes that inspired physicists to be physicist but the desire to understand more of reality itself.
My friend became a Palaeontologist having been fascinated by Million years BC as a child.
Fairy tales got physicists studying physics whilst stopping capitalism's ecocide got conscientious folk studying biology? I could agree with that.
I love the idea of interstellar travel but imagine arriving at your destination to discover that ships that left 50 years after you have already set up a thriving town or city …..
Atleast you get to enjoy a pension in a not so hostile enviroment. Stuff like this really screws with the mind even if its logical possible if they send more ships down the line.
@@Legion12Centurion really does screw with the mind doesn’t it
Like it occurred to me the other day , if one day there’s a colony on Mars and one bloke buys a brand new starship and fills it with the idea of trading when he arrives at Mars …..how much will things have changed in the years it takes him to arrive 🤔
@@Luddite1Travel time to Mars is about seven months and you can still communicate with earth and mars during that time, so they probably won't be surprised.
@@Astrophilicus that's true, a constant beam of news to Alpha Centauri system means you'll be getting four year old news by the time you get to destination but that's not too bad a lag to keep up with tech.
@@Astrophilicus That's true, but this 6/7 months flight is only possible once in 26 months, as Mars' orbit is elliptical (even then it's a distance of 60 million kilometers).
Best CZcams channel EVER!!!
Thank you people!!😊
It’s amazing that they thought of this back in the day and added the deflector dish on the Enterprise for Star Trek
I think a childlike view of the universe is a 'great physicist's' greatest attribute. Be curious. Be amazed. The trick is, never stop being amazed by the answers you find through your curiosity.
small minds are easily amused
Im starting to find it amusing when someone says to grow up, because hitting the coffin as early as possible is clearly how you win the game. Im not speaking in terms of age. That happens regardless in this, whatever. Its a mentality. Its actually the biggest clue that nobody really knew what was going on. The things i have seen and the response to it is basically what freed my mind.
Its like looking at a wave in the ocean and scolding it for moving. I mean what?
and the answers that are gifted or presented in order to solve certain Paradigm.(?)..
First step: develop propulsion systems that have actually moved beyond what basically amounts to glorified WW2 rocket tech with some early 21st century bolt on's to make things seem more advanced than they actually are. In terms of propulsion units for interstellar travel, humanity is at the crafting rudimentary flint chippings level of the stone age.
The wheels are still square.
I agree, we are still joined at the hip to propulsion systems which embrace Newton's Third Law thus making faster than light travel, or anything approaching light travel impossible. We aren't seeing alien visitors because they have the same problem.
And Ion drive is so slow to accelerate/decelerate.
We kind of already have it. Nuclear bomb rocket (project Orion), is the only technically viable solution today
@@aigarsrosenberg6208 That is about as much use as a chocolate fireguard.
I can see several reasons why Project Orion is just a plain bad idea. Not least of which was that it was dreamt up within five years of the end of WW2. So, that fits right in with glorified WW2 tech with some bolt ons.
Just more of the same old flint chippings dressed up as flakes.
"The Earth to Proxima Trail" bit is hilarious, I dig it
This is the best channel for space information!
Damn I love the fact the people asking questions are asking clever questions. As interesting as the video itself.
A ray of hope for future generations
Rare on big CZcams channels but not rare on smaller youtube channels.
The thing to remember is that in terms of travel distance, the interstellar medium is actually an interstellar large.
To mortal biological lifeforms, it would be extra^N large, where N > 100.
Supermassive interstellar medium?
"Space is big. Really big. You just won't believe how vastly hugely mind-bogglingly big it is. I mean, you may think it's a long way down the road to the chemist, but that's just peanuts to space." -- D.A.
Best video i've seen so far on interstellar travel
Nothing but the best from the great minds of youtube.
Almost the same thing as getting your daily news from the comics section.
To me (an armchair physicist ) the 'Everyone at Home' seems really best solution to the Fermi Paradox looking at facts that are available (without considering purely theoretical reasons) now.
The idea that 'everyone stays at home' makes me think we should try harder. Just make space move around us! Sound familiar?
In sci-fi movies yes we will try harder. In reality.............
The reality is that tl;dr the easy solution to the problem is to not be a biological lifeform. Advanced AI can readily adapt to the universe, and sadly many planets likely already had that happen where the machine-like intelligences basically consider beings like us their antecedents and forebears in similar way to how we view swamp bacteria and simple eukaryotes to be our forebears. Note that this is still unlikely to be detectable with human technology, as these interstellar civilizations would still likely be operating on such long timescales that even if one were near us AND using technology recognizable to us for comms we'd likely never hear their signal more frequently than centuries, but the obvious solution to that is also that their civilizations exist so apart in not just space but also time that we're not going to be aware of a civilization existing several galaxies away right now nor are we going to be aware of Andromedans existing seven billion years ago before some great Happening took them out. A good number of civilizations within a thousand light years may well have existed and never be discovered, because they may have never left and their ruins got blasted off the face of the planet or swallowed in a blackhole after their stars died. Or alternatively, most of them didn't pass the Filter, and through technology turned their once cool, teeming worlds into Venus with the remains of the ocean having long since been evaporated by positive feedback loops of climate change, or some other disastrous technology eliminating the biosphere until even geological evidence won't be found by a probe.
Alternatively, just don't think *you* will get to set foot on a planet, but rather your pod children's descendents. A generation ship is feasible with modern technology. The problem is good luck convincing anybody who believes in market ideology to self-sacrifice without any personal payoffs. As this will be expensive and require the personal sacrifice of everyone on board to being imprisoned on a ship that may or may not make it, the cheaper option is to find a way to have genebanks of simple organisms cared for by robots basically and just not worry about it for the next 500 hundred years. Do note: this will also not work well in human empire-spans, let alone lifespans, because all evidence seems to indicate earth's atmosphere didn't get oxygenated until microbes did it over hundreds of millions of years, and so you're likely to find most water worlds with only thin traces of atmosphere on landing. While fortunately H20 is plentiful fuel and breathable air eventually, that doesn't help when getting the equipment there alone will take lifetimes.
I would suggest that you look at this as flying. There is literally no physical way for you to ever fly by flapping your arms. However, with the bringing together of a wide variety of disparate technologies like fossil fuels combustion, aerodynamics, new materials building with purified metal alloys, etc. as well as an understanding of aerodynamics, you can in theory bend the laws of physics in a way which actually works if you start teaching people in 1400 A.D. and give them time to bring up all the necessary correlated technologies into production over a hundred years rather than over 500, but it still takes time and needs a lot of seemingly unrelated things be brought together. So it may be possible, in a sense, just nothing like you're expecting. But even still, the most likely scenario is that it's simply not possible for a living organism to travel to distant stars within its own lifetime.
@@onsokumaru4663 as far as we can tell technology has no limits, if we can go from unga bunga rock people to holding a device that contains all of our collective knowledge, can contact anyone around the globe, and capture reality itself then im sure anything is possible as long as we are smart enough
@@How_To_Play1 The nail in the coffin is that any technology that makes interstellar travel reasonable likely changes life on Earth so profoundly that leaving the system may no longer be desirable or useful.
First thing that came to mind was Arthur C Clarke's book, "The Songs of Distant Earth". This book brings up solutions to solve a lot of the problems brought up in this video. The magellan travels at .2c and has a massive ice shield to protect it from micrometeorites. Interesting to see that this scenario has been thought of for so long.
Long one of my favorite sci/fy tales.
I feel that just like our roads and highways they started out as rudimentary roads and with the invention of newer road clearing machines that we will have stellar pathways cleared of micro and macro sized debris little by little we will clear those well used routes.
@@johni1622 Its alot easier to build roads when you can breathe, take a break and go home without worrying about dying in the attempt to do any of those things
@@nelson_rebel3907 Duh, who said anything about easy lol
@@johni1622 It's more like impossible at the moment. To begin you'd have to solve the problem with even getting equipment, and people up into space which by itself is a monumental task that takes enourmous quantities of resources to do safely.
We have no propulsion besides fossil fuels to get us into earths orbit and into space.
This isnt sustainable for more than a couple hundred years. And even that is pretty dubious. Once those are depleted we cant even find more of that in space, and to travel in space requires enourmous amounts of fuel, time and resources.
We cant even begin to plan something out as insanely advanced as building space structures when we cant have the capability to start to do it.
You have to be able to map every moving piece of substantial mass in your path at any one time along your path in order to not collide and explode. And you have to be able to detect that matter that far out....
If you don't collide the friction will grind you down like sandpaper....
In this episode some interesting data about the composition of the interstellar medium is presented.
What is known about the composition of the intergalactic medium between galaxies in our local group, and between our local group and more distant galaxies?
there's a science fiction series called Macross that has whole fleets protecting a interstellar travelling "City" in a Turtle/Egg looking shell colony ship. Macross 7 and Macross Frontier use these cool concepts of a fleet of naval vessels travelling with the citizens of the colony ship through the stars. I think the most interesting design aspect of it is how there is a huge ceiling dome that covers the skyline of the Colony City Ship and it can simulate day and night on the under side of the ceiling shell, and open and close the shell of the ship.
there's science fiction that have some interesting concepts of space ships as a vessel carrying a crew but it's the first time I saw a whole city of people alive like any other city on earth with neighboring sections dedicated to farming, wild life, and suburban areas.
i thought I would share since we're here thinking about interstellar travel and the idea of just riding out the journey than just getting there within 80yrs.
The only way interstellar travel will be possible is if we can find an Idol to sing inspiring songs to get us there obviously.
I was thinking more along the lines of Battletech/MechWarrior with jumpships, but that relies on fictional technology of course.
Also, from a Battletech fan to a Macross fan, I think we can agree that Harmony Gold sucks.
"The only way to discover the limits of the possible is to go beyond them into the impossible." -- Arthur C Clarke
I've watched too many Issac Arthur essays to believe we can't leave.
If you could go beyond the "possible", then, whatever your found there would be "possible" as well.
"Impossible" means it's out of reach for real, you can't go there, no matter what you do.
Now, Clarke was probably talking about our own mental barriers, not about the limitations of physics.
@@Goreuncle People thought flying was impossible until someone did it. Same for going to the moon. Just because we *think* something is impossible now doesn’t mean it actually is.
@@Goreuncle it could be read both ways.
By doing the impossible we find its possible (moving through walls).
and by modelling the impossible (like seeing the past and turning it into history, or by studying the insides of a black hole) we can see the possible (in the near or far future)
Entertaining and on point. Thank you!
You don't always have to use shielding if you have large voids inside the ship you can use distance to eliminate some of the exposure. Especially if you store water vapor and oxygen in the voids. Or even nitrogen, oxygen and water vapor because you will need the nitrogen.
In a way, this question is premature right now. Becoming an interplanetary species in our own solar system is already a massive undertaking. And when that is done, humanity's understanding of what is feasible in space, as well as space infrastructure and resources to do things, will be massively different.
None of the other planets or moons in thus solar system is inhabitable. It is a waste of time and resources to even think about colonizing them. What are you going to do there? Live in an underground bunker and study rocks?
Conduct experiments in a non earth environment?
Finding another planet with life on it would do a lot more to advancing knowledge of the universe than going back to living in caves. Finding intelligent life is the Holy Grail.
@@stewiesaidthat No, what you describe is the waste of time, or a sideshow at best. The only way to become a truly spacefaring species is to actually do it. Finding another planet with life on it, if we have no way to reach it, wouldn't advance much really. And if it's intelligent life, we will have a much better position to deal with it as a truly spacefaring species.
@@hyhhy you do realize that we will never travel faster than the speed of light. We've been scanning and cataloging the stars for over 100 years and still no sign of alien life. There is nothing in this solar system but dead, barren planets.
Nobody can live on Mars without a frequent supply of food and water. And even if a foothold could be established, what is the purpose? Study rocks? Conduct experiments?
We would be better off spending those colonization resources on finding habitable planets and sending out probes rather than wasting resources on trying to send humans to Mars.
Yes, precisely. We've barely started learning how to walk in regards to space travel. Hypothesizing too hard on this question is like trying trying to go from walking to running marathons without training.
The Fermi paradox already has an answer, mostly. Space and time. The further away we look, the further back in time we see. We cannot see far away while still looking at the present. everyone knows this. So intelligent species could be out there and we would not see them. Secondly there is time on its own. Intelligent species could blossom, somewhere, any time in the future. 1000 years... 1 billion years... 1 trillion years... anytime where stars are still being made by cosmic dust, and before the heat death of the universe kicks into high gear, an intelligent species could rise, or could rise and fall.
Alien species could be doing interstellar travel right now. How would we even know? How would we see?
I don't know if anyone else feels similar but even tho life can get really hard, when I get notified about new PBS spacetime episode, stuff doesn't seem so bad. please never stop
You should subscribe to Event Horizon, John Michael Godier, Fraser Cain, and many others
Why does pure fantasy and speculation, about things we won't be able to accomplish for the next 1000 years, give you a warm feeling?
Interstellar travel vs pandemics, corruption, pollution, global warming, etc.
The same way thinking about the universe and our small part, makes our efforts seem meaningless, so too do our problems become meaningless in that span. It's a type of escape from our daily toils, but one that is fascinating, because it's probably mostly true.
@@DerekDavis213 How about interstellar travel vs highest literacy in history, most distributed wealth in history, longest lifespans in history, safest time to be alive in history, best healthcare availability and lowest chance of dying from disease in history, etc.? How about instead of basing your worldview on the constant news media crisis hype cycle you look at the actual data that shows that the modern world is objectively the best time to be alive in all of human history for almost all the human population
🙄🤡🤦♂️🤦♂️🤦♂️
in order to solve the fermi paradox you would need to explain why did a species not slowly drift through thousands or million year journeys living in megastructures to populate every single star in the galaxy. having 10m shielding, or 1000m shielding, or even an athmosphere for the spacecraft is a non-issue whatsoever.
this video does a good job at explaining some immediate challenges which might make it not worth it this century for us humans.
Precisely.
The galaxy is only 100k light years across and old civilizations would have had BILLIONS of years. Even if a civilization actively tried not to spread, they should have colonized the galaxy by now.
"The universe may be trying to kill us, but it's not trying quite hard enough." I feel that.
It'll try a lot harder on mars.
I almost wouldnt mind it if did at this point
@@nelson_rebel3907 same bruh same..specially the usa there's a fcking gender fluid sh*t existing!
I like the ship from "Passengers" which creates a magnetic field at the nose that would redirect dust and particles around the ship.
That is pretty much the same principle as every Star Trek ship with their deflector arrays.
That points out the absurdity of interstellar space travel.
Realistic hypothesis is just wearing space suits during light speed travel, pretty sure they block radiation, might be uncomfortable but they’ll live, then you have one place on the shop with radiation shielding (like a bubble in the middle of the ship) while the front of your ship still has shielding for debris still
"very difficult" but certainly not "impossible"...great video btw, very informative
I like Isaac Arthur's perspective that by the time we are traveling to other stars we will have the tech/medicine to deal with all cancers. Also the outer hull is the best place to store your bulk raw materials.
True. Especially as we already do experiments (we call them "missions to ISS"), where we can determine (the sample size is already over a thousand humans) which cancers are more likely with space. We don't have as much cosmic rays as you have on a trip to the Centauri system, but we can still try to get the statistics so that we know: "We need to find cures for that or that cancer". In some places we might not even need to. For example, if space flight would give you thyroid cancer, you can just get rid of the organ and take thyroid pills instead (as somebody living without such organ I can tell you: you can live without it!)
SFIA is my nightly sleepy time podcast and he's amazing and made me think about truly insane stuff in a very rational and serious manner. Made me wonder about this episode of spacetime, where are all the generation ships? If you don't need to go all the way up to 0.2c and can cruise at 0.05c or even 0.01c a lot of the issues brought up here kinda go away and you can build big and robust enough that you can get rid of the rest easily considering you don't need to accelerate nearly as hard. Generation ships fix everything and Isaac said "nah there's still better options"
If you read all of this and you're not the guy I answered go watch Isaac's channel
Agreed! That small scale cancer trial that was completely successful for 18/18 people with no side effects is definitely exciting. It basically allowed our own immune system to be able to effectively identify and target cancer cells. If that can be generalized and works as well in larger scale trials...
I'd certainly believe we'll have excellent cancer therapy before the first interstellar mission. Also quite likely is that radiation shielding, and mitigating cosmic dust will be no obstacle to people in the near future. Even if we don't have longevity or portable cancer therapy by that time, there's also the distinct possibility that the spacecraft could be crewed mostly by radiation-resistant machines. We might also just decide to only dedicate a small portion of the spacecraft to habitation and sensitive electronics, with extra heavy shielding.
@@DctrBread Our bodies already know how to fight cancer. That particular mechanism is impaired due to our highly processed diet. When people with cancer are put on a whole food diet, their own blood dramatically increases it's cancer-fighting abilitiy without drugs or any other intervention. It gives one pause.
czcams.com/video/lXXXygDRyBU/video.html
@14:06 The Universe may be trying to kill us, but it's not trying quite hard enough. Not hard enough to stop us from stretching our species' reach to distant tracts of interstellar space time.
WOW Matt you're awesome!!! plus all those who help make PBS Space Time come to life behind the green screen. Hats off to the writers :)
I think generation ships are the way to go. Carry the genetic information of millions of people along, and use it for reproduction during the voyage and long enough after arrival to get the population up. This completely solves the interstellar debris problem, since speeds will be much lower. Cosmic rays would still be an issue, potentially, so good shielding would still be required. One nice bit of using a "DNA library" for reproduction is that it would eliminate the tendency of evolution to change the crew during the voyage - those arriving at their new home would still be "humans as we know them." Breakthrough Starshot for advance recon / destination selection.
Two other important aspects not discussed:
1. Effect of no gravity on the human body
2. Stupendous amounts of energy it would take to move what amounts to a small planet if it needs to sustain humans for any length of time
And this is the same reason Mars is uninhabitable; humans are not evolved to function properly in that gravity. Huge complications for heart, muscles, pregnancy, etc.
I can imagine a fun game where you have this view of the ship you're supposed to bring it to Proxima Centauri successfully and then you get these game over messages from out of nowhere with no way for you to reactively counter them, like "Your ship has been destroyed by dust" or "Your entire crew has cancer". Pretty dark but I couldn't not laugh during the video.
You could write it out. I'd buy it and i'd totally help write events
So, basically the interstellar space version of Oregon Trail.
Ksp realism overhaul moment
You could call it 'Sim Interstellar'
As you put it, it would be terrible game design and more like concept art project
Arthur C Clarke had the idea of using a giant iceberg at the front of the ship to protect it as a shield in one of his books.
"Songs Of Distant Earth", I think
He also had a monolith on a moon of Saturn be a gateway to a hotel room that turned an astronaut into a cosmic baby and later turned the planet Jupiter into a 2nd sun. So...not exactly scientific stuff.
@@docsavage8640 he also predicted the use of satellites way before they were actually used for commercial purposes and materials such as carbon fibre , but you have done so much better ... what a waste of time is your comment .
Thank you for all your episodes! They are all great. =)
If a solar sail are used, how will the the vehicle brake when arriving at the destination? The other star could provide a lot less "breaking power" than the lasers used to accelerate, especially if it´s a red dwarf?
Do humans traveling to another star system want to only do a fly-by and not stop and explore the star system?
(This question is valid also for project Breakthrough Starshot, even if only machines are sent?)
Thank you again!
BR
Sails can brake by changing their configuration to bounce the light back onto a detached central part, which gets slowly slowed. No flipping needed.
Read "Songs of Distant Earth" by Arthur C Clark. Two solutions presented. Seed ships that carry nothing but DNA and the machines needed to bring them to life. And an ice shield that can be replaced by visiting wet planets.
As someone working on writing a science fiction setting, this is suuuuuper valuable to me.
Right now, Religion is radicalizing itself AND it fuses with the Right-Wing. I mean, just look at the massive Support DeSantis gets. Hes openly terrible but Shapiro makes a misinformation Campaign right now for him, trying his best to support him, which directly supports hate and big0try.
Not much can be done, so please go vote, support Drew, watch conspiracy-debunk-youtubers and most importantly watch Telltale Atheist.
The nail in the coffin is that any technology that makes interstellar travel reasonable likely changes life on Earth so profoundly that leaving the system may no longer be desirable or useful.
@@tobyvision Thats not a Nail, thats called baseless Speculation.
@@nenmaster5218 think of it this way, any of the energy manipulation requirements for interstellar travel are so profound that they would completely transform energy production on Earth. Or for example, long before we could leave our own system we could capture and mine asteroids, which would absolutely dwarf all mineral wealth produced on Earth. Or most profoundly, genetic engineering will open solutions to so many of our problems, will open new horizons of our existence at much, much more obtainable costs than trying to reach another star.
Two things I never see anyone talk about when discussing the Fermi Paradox which I personally believe to likely be two of the most difficult hurdles to overcome in relation to making interstellar travel a reality.
1.) The fact that a ship that accelerates to a relativistic speed will at some point need to DECELLERATE from it, which could realistically be a bigger hurdle than actually getting up to those speeds in the first place.
2.) THE ECONOMIC ASPECT. By that I mean to say building a ship capable of carrying humans to a destination like that, developing the necessary infrastructure, creating the systems and manufacturing the propulsion, ect. Well that's all gonna cost a lot of money, take a lot of time and likely require an unbelievable amount of resources to bring to fruition. Then, what if it isn't even possible for a ship of appreciable mass to achieve relativistic speeds of any significance? Sure, there are lots of theories on how it could maybe happen, but almost all of them seem to require some currently undiscovered, incredibly difficult to obtain or possibly imaginary form of matter. What if those hypothetical propulsions just don't actually exist or what if creating them is so prohibitively difficult, time consuming and expensive such to be a practical impossibility for any civilization or species with a finite lifespan? What if developing an interstellar civilization requires planning and dedication that would span thousands of years of effort dedicated to single project to make real? Most human societies and governments can barely last a few hundred years before imploding. Can you even imagine a project that would need to be started now and take a thousand years or longer to finish? What if the solution to the Fermi Paradox is simply that it isn't possible because no civilization throughout the cosmos has yet been stable enough within their respective societies to start and carry out a project requiring such vast time scales?
There are other issues that don’t seem to be discussed-we’re talking about going to the nearest star here. But spacetime is incomprehensibly vast. Not only would we likely have to travel ridiculously far to reach other life, we’d have to be traveling in the right direction AND at the right time.
What do I mean by “at the right time?” Well, to get to far away life, we’d have to contend with the relativity of time. If they are close to at rest with respect to Earth, they’d age must faster than our ship’s crew by the time we reach them. And vice versa if they were coming to Earth.
1. Knowing where to look is extremely difficult due to the vastness of space.
2. Knowing WHEN to look is just as crucial. It may be that extraterrestrial life elsewhere in the universe is long extinct.
3. Even if aliens found our signals, would they be significantly redshifted and perhaps not comprehensible? If not, would we be extinct by the time our signal reaches then or their signal reaches us? Would THEY be extinct or moved by the time our signal reaches them?
This is usually just swept under the rug, but the insane vastness of spacetime probably plays a big role.
There are tons of solutions to the Fermi paradox, my favorite has to do with the fact that the most recent estimation of stars in the milky way galaxy that have a planet similar enough to ours that life like ours could evolve on it is less than 30 ... And that doesn't even guarantee life. The point being that we're probably not alone but likely we are in this galaxy or any galaxy near it.
Which although sobering, is probably a good thing too.
There are probably intelligent species that aren't motivated by money. Maybe some space bees just get to work and can achieve things that human flaws prevent from happening here sooner (if ever).
Your issue with the fermi paradox seems to presume that we must or aliens must travel to our solar system for us to know about them. Travel isnt required at all.... if we receive radio signals that are unequivocally intelligent life then the paradox is eliminated.
@@davidaustin6962 I like the dark forest solution.... we dont hear anyone else the same way creatures in a dark forest with lots of predators likely dont know about all the other critters around. Too dangerous to make themselves known. Then here comes earth, a recently hatched fledgling crying out for food and then eaten before it even knew what happened. Its not that there arent intelligent civilizations, its just that they are all quiet. Because all the loud ones... go away....
Hitch a ride on a comet/asteroid travelling to a solar system to start us off with. And when i say hitch a ride i meant A fully automated probe from our solar system to Alpha Centauri. Getting a probe there first and having it send back the data/images
1. To communicate with Alpha Centauri, our closest star-system, located about 40 trillion kilometres away, it would take more than four years for each message to be delivered.
2. Find an asteroid/comet heading in that direction
3. Send probe and wait to increase the chances maybe send 3 on 3 separate asteroids/comets
It's important to keep in mind that we don't know what we don't know. FTL may be completely possible. Not so long ago human flight was considered to be impossible. And this applies to all science not just FTL
Even if we managed to populate a world outside our own we'd be so far apart that we'd have little to do with eachother. Just sending a message would take years.
we wouldn't even be the same species anymore.....that's an insight people miss
we can't populate space with humans, just fill it with aliens
@@apokatastasian2831 For real. Even the next State over that's like 3 hours away has a different culture, accent, and way of seeing things (politics). You stretch this to different countries, and the difference is even bigger with different languages, morals, behaviors, etc. Now imagine putting humans on a different planet. We would not be the same species, and we would be too different to cooperate or feel as one.
Not if people start living 1000s of years.
@@apokatastasian2831 By that same argument, our ancestors and our evolutionary descendants would not be human, and moreover, your definition of human is far to narrow. Yes, they act the same way and look the same, and have a similar language, but oh-no they're not human because they're to tall and skinny, or green, or three feet tall, etc. We cAaAn'T hAVe tHAAt! They're to dIFReNT So It DoEsnT CoUNT. I guess we should never colonize space then in the first place. No. that's a nonsensical outlook.
@@halfpanbread-bread820 our ancestors (if you go back far enough) were indeed not human, and perhaps a few millenia later our descendants may not be either (due to both biological and linguistic evolution)
We just need the protomolecule.
Deniers bias could be a factor
Ah yes, that will certainly help and not cause any worse side-problems.
@@osmosisjones4912 it's a joke from the show the expanse. Spoilers: it's one of the few things that isn't realistic in the hard sci Fi books bc it's alien.
@@justinh.7846 isn't hydrogen the protomolecule
And Epstein drive.
My question is how would you test the equipment and verify success/failure. Look at all the missions it took to get to the moon. Each were testing particular things without anyone actually stepping on the surface. This include piloting the LM to less than 10 miles above the surface before returning.
How would we do that for interstellar space where distances are much more vast and communication effectively impossible? How would we find and correct design flaws. How would we even know of success or failure? Who's going to pay for that?
“the universe may be trying to kill us. but not hard enough” is the most metal line ive ever hear
09:40 - No, you'll need it on the rear of the ship as well if you want to flip and burn to decelerate at your destination. Whether some of that rear shielding needs to be inside your propulsion system depends on if its exhaust itself provides the necessary shielding.
I don't see why not, a powerful engine is an equally powerful weapon after all. I'd be more worried about possibly getting hit while you're turning around.
However, throwing out a multi layered mm-thick shield during your journey should hopefully prevent most of these issues. They should be moving relative to you while you're flipping, so you can have them move out of the way for retrieval and stowage before you relight your main engine.
One solution I have seen proposed in sci fi is that the entire skin of the ship is a water tank / jacket which can be pumped around to provide more protection where needed. Assuming a fusion drive, the water could likely be used as fuel.
Just move/swing the shield mass from the front to the back. Good point about the exhaust path though. Maybe the exhaust does not need to be on the same line traced out by the habitation i.e offset the propulsion sideways relative to habitation.
No, rotate the shielding where/when needed.
Makes me think of an idea that shows up occasionally in more hard sci-fi of building a ship inside a meteor (edit sorry asteroid) to use the thick layers of rock and ice as shielding.
that's a terrible idea how are you going to accelerate it?
@@thishandleistaken1011 I mean, same way you accelerate anything, thrusters, in the case of the stories I've seen it in they're usually torch ships so fusion thrusters mostly
Whilst it is possible to shield in this way against radiation, it does not solve the problem of weightlessness and bone loss incurred in space, which is very debilitating. Bring on artificial gravity generation.
@@itchyvet That part's relatively simple. Orient the "ship's" living quarters so that you can take advantage of the thrust gravity.
@@superleetmegapunx Um.. that's not how thing work. Think about how fast the earth is moving through the galaxy. Our solar system isn't just standing still. We'd all be flat and dead if so.
I would say the biggest factor that makes interstellar travel difficult is that space is not habitable. If you could breathe in space and go up there wearing just a T-shirt and shorts, chances are we would already have big shuttles carrying livestock and greenery travelling towards Alpha Centauri right now.
I agree
Every time something is impossible, some clever person makes it possible. So the real question is how long until THAT happens with space travel.
The question most people answer is NOT the one being asked, but rather answers the question: Is interstellar travel possible using current/near future science and tech? The answer to that is a loud "NO." We just aren't there yet.
This is a faith-based argument. Not everything that we know to be impossible has been or will be made possible by technology.
Arthur C Clarke made books and books of interstellar travel based on current physics. Basically big generational ships that don't go that far.
@@jeffk464 Exactly. Almost all the negativity about the future of space travel is still based on people considering modern technology. That's effectively assuming that we have technologically peaked, and will never make anymore big leaps ever again. I don't buy it.
Why is no one talking about warp drive.
@@clementvining2487 Because people continue to be hung up on current limits, thinking deep within the box.
The radiation problem is entirely solvable, if you're able to supply enough energy. A high energy plasma shell would block the radiation. It would also block comms and visibility, so you'd need to be sure of your travel calculations so that you slow things down at the right time, so that it's safe to shut off the shell.
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One concept i heard of while randomly browsing through wikipedia is that of the “seeder ship” (not to be confused with “seedship”, the name of a cool game you should play, but only once). Essentially, the interstellar colony ship does not carry any fully living creatures at all: Rather, its passengers are all embryos, to be planted into artificial wombs & grown into fully-formed colonists only after the ship has arrived at its destination. This has the advantages of the colonists being much, much lighter, and also much more resistant to radiation (for the simple fact that they’re so much tinier).
Limit the shielding to only the living spaces and establish stay time limitations in unshielded spaces. Ship's control, communication, and life support can be centralized within this shielded space, with only emergency repairs or periodic inspections allowed in the unshielded spaces. Or just nail down cryo-suspension for humans and shield the people boxes
It may be possible in the future to accelerate a spacecraft to 0.2c, but at the mid-point of the journey you have to turn around the ship and use the engine to slow down again, it's not good to arrive somewhere and fly past at 0.2c without stopping. Shielding needed at the front and back
No if you can design an engine to propell you forwards you would also design it to have a reverse. .
The point a lot of people miss is that when you calculate the time to travel to another star at 0.2C you will actually need to go 0.4C or take twice as long as you correctly pointed out at the midway point you will be decelerating
You also have the unlikely but never the less worry some moment that flipping and burning leaves you unprotected in the midships. Something could possibly go wrong whilst your at the highest speed.
Thank you for taking my suggestion for this consideration into account. It's one of the more subtle but clearly plausible explanations to why we don't see evidence of other civilizations, even if it doesn't entirely solve the Fermi "Paradox" (not really a paradox).
It’s not really a paradox? Lol. Since it’s not a logical contradiction right??
@@johannassburg Right, it's not, because we have perfectly reasonable answers as to why there is currently no evidence for extraterrestrials on these sort of scales. It's only a paradox when you don't understand or consider the entirety of the situation and what the possible outcomes are and how they could come about. It's pretty basic really, even if we don't like what it can tell us. Fermi himself, btw, stated it wasn't a paradox (he never suggested that aliens didn't exist).
I think it's completely implausible. What precisely prevents all civilizations to reach other stars forever?
You're sitting there in your solar system for billions of years and billions of other civilizations do the same and none of them can figure out how to reach even the closest star?
It's horribly implausible.
@@MrCmon113You are correct, it may still be horribly implausible, but unfortunately that's enough to warrant the reasoning applied. It may be so rare, it just doesn't happen enough for two civilizations to every meet.
Love your content. In a warp bubble, the space is moving, not the ship, which should prevent the dust impacts.
I think the best solution for worrying about space dust would be an anti gravity field around the spacecrafts hull
Now all we have to do is invent anti-gravity fields. Then find a way to scale them up to the size of a space craft.
Captain: we're almost there! Time to press the brakes!
Pilot: brakes?
Abandon ship
Is that ever addressed? Yes, you may somehow get to 0.2c, but how do you stop or slow at the other end????
@@peterlip8 I guess if you use a solar wind sail to speed up, and keep it from being destroyed for 20+ years, it'll slow you down as you approach the other star..
Possible solution: wait for other stars to come to us. Scholz's Star had a perihelion distance of .82 ly (1/5th of the distance to Proxima Centauri) 70,000 years ago. It is estimated that the Sun has a close encounter like that every 100,000 years or so. So we become good stewards of Earth, refine our propulsion systems and wait for a few tens of thousands of years. Then launch a mission(s) to catch up to the interloper as it passes nearby. That solves the deceleration problem - we don't!
@@gwarf343 a generation is only 30 years, a lifetime is 80 years, perhaps 100 years.
@@gwarf343 That's more or less the age at which people reproduce.
@@zarkospasojevic6272 IT is also about the minimum time to have children and raise them to adults.
That will take to long. Andromeda and the Milky way will become one galaxy one day, but not for a very long time. We want to send people into spacetime as fast as possible. I believe we will do it.
@@Heliocentric In interstellar space life expectancy is likely to be much shorter than on Earth.
Fav SOLution. Starship Sol. Nudge Sol with mere mirror stationary satellites. Slow and steady steering the entire Sol System to fly by target systems to visit. Get as close as safely possible to so colony ships have less distance between Sol and Colony destinations.