Space combat, travel, living...

[Panda]

Lets say you have a lamp and you put your finger in front of it so a shadow is projected on a wall.
When you wag your finger the shadow will move faster than your finger.
If your finger moves parallel to the wall, the shadow's speed will be multiplied by a factor D/d where d is the distance from the lamp to your finger while the capital D is the distance from the lamp to the wall.
If the wall is far away the movement of the shadow will be delayed cause of the time it takes the light to travel to the wall but the shadow's speed is still increased by the same ratio.
the shadows speed is not limited to be less than the speed of light.

Are you sure that the shadow of your finger doesn't just appear to be moving faster than the light because of diffraction? The degree to which the beam is diffracted depends on a couple of things. One can't eliminate this fundamental property of light when it is coming from a lamp and being projected onto the wall.

One can better understand how light waves function by learning about Maxwell's equations. Maxwell's equations demonstrate that visible light is an electromagnetic wave that spreads at a certain frequency.

[Gota]

Close to the speed of light, to me at least, is more feasible than FTL.

but still pointless...unless people want to live for generations in space and even than we can only feasbily reach a few close targets withihn our galaxy.

[TradeMark]

Pointless? When we have no bodies, we live forever, thus we have billions of years lifespan, thus we dont need to care about faster speeds. Thats what this whole subthread was all about: "if we transfer our consciousnesses wirelessly with speed of light bla bla"

If you read & thought my post more, we wouldnt had +2 more pages about this.... you just got stuck in the word "speed of light" like someone already said

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It's way more realistic to figure out a way to transfer our consciousnesses wirelessly and spread our copies of our minds to every planet with small spaceships, than build epic size spaceships with frozen people and hyperdrives with all kinds of dangers and keep trying to populate planets.

Hmm, maybe thats why we exist here: aliens wanted to spread their minds all over the galaxy like i suggested, but instead of robots, they used most efficient possible way: organic life to build their bodies, and then later transfer their consciousnesses in the evolved bodies (which took billions of years) of human kind. Makes sense now Maybe thats what this "soul" talk is all about, maybe we already have some other consciousness in our head, but we just arent aware of it, its easy to trick brain to believe things.

[Gota]

Pointless? When we have no bodies, we live forever, thus we have billions of years lifespan, thus we dont need to care about faster speeds. Thats what this whole subthread was all about: "if we transfer our consciousnesses wirelessly with speed of light bla bla"

If you read & thought my post more, we wouldnt had +2 more pages about this.... you just got stuck in the word "speed of light" like someone already said

--

It's way more realistic to figure out a way to transfer our consciousnesses wirelessly and spread our copies of our minds to every planet with small spaceships, than build epic size spaceships with frozen people and hyperdrives with all kinds of dangers and keep trying to populate planets.

Hmm, maybe thats why we exist here: aliens wanted to spread their minds all over the galaxy like i suggested, but instead of robots, they used most efficient possible way: organic life to build their bodies, and then later transfer their consciousnesses in the evolved bodies (which took billions of years) of human kind. Makes sense now Maybe thats what this "soul" talk is all about, maybe we already have some other consciousness in our head, but we just arent aware of it, its easy to trick brain to believe things.

Can you be a bit less self absorbed?I was replying to bob...
I meant its pointless to reach "close to light" speeds because the energy needed would be enormous while it wont actually allow us to truly master space travel.
I mean of course it would be awesome if we could travel so fast but Its not the answer.

[TradeMark]

And I wasnt replying to your reply about bobs reply...

[Gota]

but still pointless

Pointless?

[PicassoCT]

I always wondered, if by accident, i active a laser, and play some shadow play, which results in monstrously deformed rabbit, and some light years away, a alien sees it on its moon, falls in love with the beauty from another solsystem, and travells all the way to the planet of the apes, does that shadow make the alien look a bit dim? Or us? Or the Universe?

[Licho]

You could get to another star in reasonable time even with 1950's technology!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Or ... ropulsion)

more modern fusion proposal:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Daedalus

or this modest realistic probe moving at 4.5% c:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Longshot

[Gota]

But compare these distances to the known size of the universe...

[Neddie]

Gota, theoretically space travel can occur in discreet steps, from one potentially habitable body one generation to another the next, etcetera.

As for functional immortality, TradeMark, you seem to assume that the mind as an entity can be separated from the body. Arguably, your consciousness emerges from the physical structure in which it is contained, i.e. the physical mind produces the conscious mind. Furthermore, without interface devices such as eyes and tastebuds, how is the projected consciousness to interact with or even realize the existence of an external reality? It is unlikely that a fabricated device which does not mimic or replicate an already existing organ will be usable in this capacity, and no interactive device is without mass or free from decay. Patterning and transferring the human mind to digital format is improbable to the point of impossibility, creating means for that transhuman consciousness to manipulate anything physical is more so, creating means for the aforementioned to do anything useful is more so, creating means for the aforementioned to do anything useful and adaptive is more so...

Not to mention the difficulties of signal degradation, shielding, uncertain lifespan power systems.

I mean, your proposal seems more manageable, but it assumes as many if not more realistically impossible advancements.

[Licho]

But compare these distances to the known size of the universe...

I just want to get to nearby star, not to edge of visible universe :)
Besides some parts of universe are maybe no longer accessible - due to inflation happening at speed greater than light, you cannot get to some parts even at light speed anymore.

Also if you have truly fast spaceship, from your perspective it woudln't matter much if you travel to next star or to far away galaxy.

[Gota]

From the history of human technological advance the solution wont be bigger faster ships but a completely different something...either we wont be traveling in space time at all and maybe speed wont play any role in getting to what we now perceive as distant locations or we wont travel at all or we will realize something about the universe which will make the idea of traveling to other locations silly or redundant.

[Teutooni]

I think the human body as it is now is not suitable for space travel, so some combination of genetic alteration, cybernetics or creating a new species of artificial intelligence beings is necessary for long range space travel to become feasible. But what TM suggests sounded like ascension a la stargate, which is imo way less feasible than FTL.

[Licho]

History of human progress tells you nothing about reality of physical universe Gota.
It might well turn out there are no shortcuts.

But even then, if you can build interstellar spaceship using current technology for just 10% of yearly USA GDP, its entirely plausible that whole world would be willing to invest into such project. Especially if we detect habitable world in decent range.

[Licho]

I think the human body as it is now is not suitable for space travel, so some combination of genetic alteration, cybernetics or creating a new species of artificial intelligence beings is necessary for long range space travel to become feasible. But what TM suggests sounded like ascension a la stargate, which is imo way less feasible than FTL.

What makes it unsuitable? You can be pretty sure any such craft would feature artifical gravity and proper radiation shielding. Under such conditions it should be pretty much ok environment for current people.
Worst issues might be psychological though. If you have no real-time communication with Earth, its hard to predict what happens with group of such isolated people.

[Teutooni]

What makes it unsuitable?

Well, we need precise conditions to live. Life support systems would need to emulate most aspects of a biosphere - oxygen, water, food, heat etc. Which, imo, would make a pretty fragile system. With the speeds of orion like rockets to travel 10 ly would take around 100 years. Maintaining the conditions in space for that long could get tricky. Multiple layers of backups would need to be implemented because if one of these systems fails even for a few days (hours in case of oxygen or heating) the consequences could be fatal. Sounds very expensive (in terms of delta v capacity) and risky.

Aside from the possible problems related to living inside an artificial structure the whole time, the psychological side might not be such an issue imo. Humans have lived in small isolated communities before (granted they were usually born there, not thrown together).

[Panda]

As for functional immortality, TradeMark, you seem to assume that the mind as an entity can be separated from the body. Arguably, your consciousness emerges from the physical structure in which it is contained, i.e. the physical mind produces the conscious mind. Furthermore, without interface devices such as eyes and tastebuds, how is the projected consciousness to interact with or even realize the existence of an external reality? It is unlikely that a fabricated device which does not mimic or replicate an already existing organ will be usable in this capacity, and no interactive device is without mass or free from decay. Patterning and transferring the human mind to digital format is improbable to the point of impossibility, creating means for that transhuman consciousness to manipulate anything physical is more so, creating means for the aforementioned to do anything useful is more so, creating means for the aforementioned to do anything useful and adaptive is more so...

Not to mention the difficulties of signal degradation, shielding, uncertain lifespan power systems.

I mean, your proposal seems more manageable, but it assumes as many if not more realistically impossible advancements.

Maybe the thinks that the mind can be separated from the body because of the out-of-body experience phenomenon. However, even people who believe in out-of-body experiences still tend to say that you are still attached to your body in some way when that occurs.

Maybe he also thinks that the dinosaurs were also aliens. That's kind of funny, large and little green or brown aliens that look like dinosaurs.

[maackey]

Gah, it's getting really hard to keep track of things, it seems as if everyone is talking about something different. I'll need to clean this up when I've got more time.

Anyway, with regards to near-light speed, or faster than light travel: You would need a particle or force to propel you faster or near the speed of light. If you were able to shoot light out your thrusters, you could only go as fast as the light that you push out (and this would be very difficult as the momentum/mass of light is very small) and to go faster than light you'd need a particle that is faster (tachyons) or bending space-time itself (Wrinkle in Time)

IIRC traveling to the nearest star, even eventually surpassing the speed of light at the midpoint, would take an extremely long time. Because you can only accelerate/decelerate at ~1g for a comfortable ride, or 2g etc... for a very long uncomfortable trip -- regardless of how much power and how fast you could accelerate theoretically. (unless of course you could rip a wormhole and travel through)

Time dilates significantly only very close to the speed of light. So if you don't want to pack food for years, the vessel would still need obscene accelration power (accelerating to c at 9.81m/s^2 takes around a year). Also, at relativistic speeds, to maintain accelration you need more and more power to account for the increased inertia caused by the vessels kinetic energy... Which is impossible since as velocity approaches c the kinetic energy (and inertia) approaches infinity.

I really don't think that objects actually stop in time or get infinitely massive. It is just because they are traveling at the limit of observation that they *APPEAR* to undergo changes. Train whistles don't change their energy output of the whistle when approaching/leaving, but it appears that the frequency changes because of the doppler effect. Galaxies' arms don't give off bluish/reddish light because the stars are that color, but because they are traveling toward us/away from us and they just *appear* to have different hues.

[Licho]

Maackey you should listen to relativity. It's well verified theory :) And It says no- object with mass cannot travel faster than light (unless space itself is distorted) and yes time dilates. Moving close to speed of light you could travel across visible universe in your life time.

Its well tested and time dilatation even has to be taken into account for stuff like GPS satellites.. If you want example from objects really moving close to speed of light, take particle experiments, time slows for them (like decay time) and mass increases for them exactly as calculated - and we propel some bigger material stuff at close-to-c speeds too, like lead atoms.

[TradeMark]

As for functional immortality, TradeMark, you seem to assume that the mind as an entity can be separated from the body.

Read below.

But what TM suggests sounded like ascension a la stargate, which is imo way less feasible than FTL.

Lol no xD I meant to send the data to build our bodies at the other place, instead of sending our bodies with big spaceships: its much faster/easier/cheaper to send a wave of light, than billions of atoms. (you can replace the word "light" with any type of radiation you wish).