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Science - Time Dilation and other Quarks of Long-Distance Travel

Discussion in 'Too Hot for Swamp Gas' started by chemgator, Dec 6, 2023.

  1. chemgator

    chemgator GC Hall of Fame

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    Get ready to have your mind blown. Physicists evaluate what would happen if humans started transporting themselves to other star systems (forget about other galaxies), assuming that someone (Elaine Musque?) figured out how to accelerate to near-light-speed. The nearest star system is 4 light years away. Communications, even if they were transmitted at the speed of light, would not necessarily catch up to the spacecraft, so there would be a blackout of sorts. Messages from the spacecraft to the destination would all arrive just before the spacecraft did.

    People on the spacecraft would experience time (and age more slowly?) differently when they were traveling near the speed of light than people on earth.

    Interstellar astronauts would face years-long communication delays due to time dilation

     
  2. ncargat1

    ncargat1 GC Hall of Fame

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    This sounds like a word problem from my Intro to Modern Physics class.
     
  3. homer

    homer GC Hall of Fame

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    This can be used to get rid of illegal aliens and people who threaten to leave the US if the election doesn’t go as they like.

    Win, win, and then some.
     
  4. Trickster

    Trickster VIP Member

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    "Star systems" are galaxies.

    The solution to the problem of interstellar travel lies with quantum physics and quantum computers. We have only scratched the surface of what there is to know about how the universe and all that is in it "operates". Yet, humanity is on the cusp of huge breakthroughs which will bring profound changes.
     
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  5. Spurffelbow833

    Spurffelbow833 GC Hall of Fame

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    Why send them out there where they can be found and motivate whoever finds them to come here and turn the Earth into a smoking cinder?

    I say launch them into the Sun.