Right, that's where we're at with it now, but there are still researchers experimenting with ways to leverage quantum entanglement to transmit classical information. Quantum teleportation is one way to do that, but still relies on secondary methods limited by speed-of-light communication - but I'm assuming that the existence of the underlying mechanism leaves open the possibility that we may develop a way to leverage it for useful superluminal communication.
Billions of nearby habitable planets
- Thread starter mus
- Start date
We should first get into the solar system on a regular basis - in fact, the US should find a way to get into orbit without help from the Russians.
Uhh, yeah, NASA is a pretty freaking reputable source. About as reputable as you can get. I'm too drunk to measure a meaningful counterpoint, so for now I'll just concede that truth. 
Life on Uranus would be a pain in the @ss to get to. 
http://www.distance-from.com/earthtouranusdistance/betweenearthanduranusdistance.php
13 light years = 7.64204976 × 10¹³ miles
764,204,976,000,000 miles
http://wiki.answers.com/Q/What_is_the_fastest_man_made_space_craft_today
Let's almost triple that and round down to 100,000 mph!
And this is at three times the speed we can currently achieve with unmanned spacecraft.
Now, does anyone wanna figure the logistics for a 8 year manned space trip?
How about a 80 year space trip?
A 180 year space trip?
A 1,180 year space trip?
A 7,180 year space trip?
A 77,180 year space trip?
Then tack on another ten thousand years!
Anyone have any idea what humanity was doing 87 thousand years ago?
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/...eanderthal-cave-paintings-spain-science-pike/
http://news.yahoo.com/spanish-cave-paintings-shown-oldest-world-180821995.html
http://humanorigins.si.edu/human-characteristics/change
Great.
Maybe in the elapsed time from the first launch we can develop something ten times as fast and actually pass our primitive monkey selves en route!
http://www.distance-from.com/earthtouranusdistance/betweenearthanduranusdistance.php
Code:
Distance Kilometers Miles AU Light Hours
Average Distance 2.88 billion km 1.79 billion miles 19.2 AU 2.66 light hours13 light years = 7.64204976 × 10¹³ miles
764,204,976,000,000 miles
http://wiki.answers.com/Q/What_is_the_fastest_man_made_space_craft_today
"The fastest man made space craft today is Voyager 1. This space craft was launched in 1977 and travels at 11 miles a second, (39,000mph) which, if you think about it, is pretty pathetic. "
Voyager 1, Max speed: 38,610 mph (62,136 km/h)Let's almost triple that and round down to 100,000 mph!
764,204,976,000,000 miles
/ 100,000 mph
= 764,204,976 hours
/ 8,765.81 hours in a year
= 87,180 years!
/ 100,000 mph
= 764,204,976 hours
/ 8,765.81 hours in a year
= 87,180 years!
And this is at three times the speed we can currently achieve with unmanned spacecraft.
Now, does anyone wanna figure the logistics for a 8 year manned space trip?
How about a 80 year space trip?
A 180 year space trip?
A 1,180 year space trip?
A 7,180 year space trip?
A 77,180 year space trip?
Then tack on another ten thousand years!
Anyone have any idea what humanity was doing 87 thousand years ago?
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/...eanderthal-cave-paintings-spain-science-pike/
http://news.yahoo.com/spanish-cave-paintings-shown-oldest-world-180821995.html
http://humanorigins.si.edu/human-characteristics/change
By 90,000 years ago Modern humans make special tools for fishing
Between 80,000 and 60,000 years ago Modern humans spread to Asia
Between 80,000 and 60,000 years ago Modern humans spread to Asia
Great.
Maybe in the elapsed time from the first launch we can develop something ten times as fast and actually pass our primitive monkey selves en route!
That's not a good assumption to make! Current understanding of entanglement asserts that it will never be possible to achieve superluminal communication with quantum teleportation. In the example I've quoted above, it may have been hard 100 years ago to imagine the communication we are enjoying now but if someone could imagine it, there was no theory or evidence at that time to assert that it would always be impossible to achieve. This is NOT the case with the quantum teleportation and superluminal communication! The process of finding some way to trick entanglement into transferring information might appear relatively trivial compared to many of the advances made by science over the last century but it's not! It would first require discarding pretty much the entire field of Quantum Mechanics and inventing some other explanation of how the universe functions at the atomic level.
Your previous example is quite ironical because to prove the possibility of superluminal communication using quantum teleportation would require disproving the field of physics upon which the technology we are using to communicate is based!
This is the least of our problems! Until we learn to travel from the earth to the moon in about the same amount of time as it takes for you to walk from your sitting room to your kitchen, travel to the nearest earth-like planet is little more than sci-fi.
G
Really awesome stuff about the planets.
It's really humbling and, in a way, inspiring to consider the challenges and improbabities involved in trying to travel to a planet in another solar system.
Probably what's required is thinking in very looooong sighted terms, something our species can do better than any other species that we know of, but said capacity still seems egregiously inadequate, huh?
Still, as it's been pointed out, we've come a long way, Baby, in what, in human terms, seems like a verrrrrrry long time.
But short the very real, regressive elements and practical challenges facing us throwing a wrench in this, it seems that we can expect near future generations to be making some very serious changes to themselves...like genetically engineering themselves.
What could that mean? Well, how many scientists like physicists like to say this about the struggle to find a Unified Theory. Maybe, they say, ...maybe we're just not intelligent enough to figure it out.
But, what if they do figure out how to make humans smarter? Maybe by genetic engineering. Maybe with augmentation by hardware and software. Or, maybe the AI of the future will help already intelligent people to make those breakthroughs.
Maybe, then, folks will figure a Unified Theory out. Maybe such changes will also help them figure out better ways to engineer rockets or whatever forms of propulsion to make space travel more practical. Maybe they'll engineer people who are more physically compatible with the problems or conditions of living in space or in atmospheres different than what humans have evolved to live in.
Stephen Hawking has written that he expects future generations will be tinkering with themselves in this way.
I would expect, short of this or that disaster, natural or man made, ending these potentials, that we won't have to wait 87,000 years to see these sorts of changes. Probably in this century, or the next. I say this with a very big caveat, of course, because there are still powerful ideological forces which are thoroughly hostile to even the notion, and we all know how obstructionist and destructive those forces can be (trying to be diplomatic about it and to put it very mildly, not naming names).
[ Then again: Scientific American: The Limits of Intelligence by Douglas Fox. And, listen to a podcast interview with the author.. Still, he says in the interview that it doesn't necessarily follow that the current human brain is fully optimized. (Though, hmmm, I'm going to guess that it is then.) (And the dude has never seen Blade Runner?! WTH?!) ]
I agree that the probability is that intersteller travel will not be launched from this planet, not so much. That is to say, short of some tech startup (like Zefram Cochran's and Lilly Sloane's), or JPL, or Apple, or whoever inventing the warp drive, people will probably need to colonize this solar system, its planets, and its space first, get comfortable and handy at doing so, and then, perhaps, begin with mulit-generational ships for the intersteller travel. Also, consider, the modified humans of the future, with their advanced medical science, could potentially live much extended life spans. Is 120 years really the max limit for a human being? Who knows. It sounds less and less likely ...with tampering. I can't help thinking of the Engineers of Prometheus as being excellant sci fi exemplars of this. Do we want to be like that is probably another question.
*******
Well, I don't see any mention of superluminal travel, but celebrity physicist, Brian Gramme, seems to believe that entanglement could allow instantaneous travel. And, I would think, if he thinks a human could, hypothetically, be transported, then surely conventional information, in say, the form of a piece of paper with writing on it, could also be teleported. As it is described, particles do not actually travel from point to point. They are constructed on the other end instantaneously. But, alas and unfortunately, I guess you need to already have a machine at the other point to do the constructing for it to work. In other words, if I understand correctly, you couldn't just lob it into space and hope that someone out there catches it. =P
NOVA: Fabric of the Cosmos: Quantum Leap
From the transcript:
It's really humbling and, in a way, inspiring to consider the challenges and improbabities involved in trying to travel to a planet in another solar system.
Probably what's required is thinking in very looooong sighted terms, something our species can do better than any other species that we know of, but said capacity still seems egregiously inadequate, huh?
Still, as it's been pointed out, we've come a long way, Baby, in what, in human terms, seems like a verrrrrrry long time.
But short the very real, regressive elements and practical challenges facing us throwing a wrench in this, it seems that we can expect near future generations to be making some very serious changes to themselves...like genetically engineering themselves.
What could that mean? Well, how many scientists like physicists like to say this about the struggle to find a Unified Theory. Maybe, they say, ...maybe we're just not intelligent enough to figure it out.
But, what if they do figure out how to make humans smarter? Maybe by genetic engineering. Maybe with augmentation by hardware and software. Or, maybe the AI of the future will help already intelligent people to make those breakthroughs.
Maybe, then, folks will figure a Unified Theory out. Maybe such changes will also help them figure out better ways to engineer rockets or whatever forms of propulsion to make space travel more practical. Maybe they'll engineer people who are more physically compatible with the problems or conditions of living in space or in atmospheres different than what humans have evolved to live in.
Stephen Hawking has written that he expects future generations will be tinkering with themselves in this way.
I would expect, short of this or that disaster, natural or man made, ending these potentials, that we won't have to wait 87,000 years to see these sorts of changes. Probably in this century, or the next. I say this with a very big caveat, of course, because there are still powerful ideological forces which are thoroughly hostile to even the notion, and we all know how obstructionist and destructive those forces can be (trying to be diplomatic about it and to put it very mildly, not naming names).
[ Then again: Scientific American: The Limits of Intelligence by Douglas Fox. And, listen to a podcast interview with the author.. Still, he says in the interview that it doesn't necessarily follow that the current human brain is fully optimized. (Though, hmmm, I'm going to guess that it is then.) (And the dude has never seen Blade Runner?! WTH?!) ]
I agree that the probability is that intersteller travel will not be launched from this planet, not so much. That is to say, short of some tech startup (like Zefram Cochran's and Lilly Sloane's), or JPL, or Apple, or whoever inventing the warp drive, people will probably need to colonize this solar system, its planets, and its space first, get comfortable and handy at doing so, and then, perhaps, begin with mulit-generational ships for the intersteller travel. Also, consider, the modified humans of the future, with their advanced medical science, could potentially live much extended life spans. Is 120 years really the max limit for a human being? Who knows. It sounds less and less likely ...with tampering. I can't help thinking of the Engineers of Prometheus as being excellant sci fi exemplars of this. Do we want to be like that is probably another question.
*******
Well, I don't see any mention of superluminal travel, but celebrity physicist, Brian Gramme, seems to believe that entanglement could allow instantaneous travel. And, I would think, if he thinks a human could, hypothetically, be transported, then surely conventional information, in say, the form of a piece of paper with writing on it, could also be teleported. As it is described, particles do not actually travel from point to point. They are constructed on the other end instantaneously. But, alas and unfortunately, I guess you need to already have a machine at the other point to do the constructing for it to work. In other words, if I understand correctly, you couldn't just lob it into space and hope that someone out there catches it. =P
NOVA: Fabric of the Cosmos: Quantum Leap
From the transcript:
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As much as I love the thought of interstellar space travel, the Fermi Paradox constantly rears it's ugly and disheartening head. Simply put, it states:
If there is extraterrestrial life, then where is it?
The basis is that our sun and planet are fairly new, and in the span of 90 000 years we've gone from "making special tools for fishing" to powered flight, and then 100 years later, sending an object completely outside of our solar system. If we're not the only ones, and their "enlightenment" evolution started 100 million years before ours did then they could be 100 million years more advanced than us. And at almost any reasonable pace, could have inhabited the entire galaxy in a less than 50 million years, give or take 10 or 20 million years.
Evolution started here some 3.85 billion years ago, but went through no less than 5 global mass extinctions, sometimes losing possibly as much as 95% of all life on the planet.
Even with all that it still produced us in 3.85 billion years, the solar system being a mere 4.6 billion years old and the Milky Way being no less than 13 billion years old.
So where are they? That's an awful lot of time to squeeze in a few civilizations forming, when it can only take 100 million years to go from rodents to homo sapiens, even with a global extinction in the middle (which arguably started the process off by removing the dominant species).
Never actually being able to travel between solar systems is one answer, but there are many other more sobering ones also.
Perhaps intelligent life always kills it's planet and dies off.
Perhaps intelligent life always kills itself.
The famous "Prime Directive", and somehow they never screw up.
Perhaps life always gets reset by global extinction event, somehow we've just managed to hang on a bit longer.
Hopefully, it's something like the last one, and we can get mobile before it happens again.
Fermi's such a killjoy.
CraigL
If there is extraterrestrial life, then where is it?
The basis is that our sun and planet are fairly new, and in the span of 90 000 years we've gone from "making special tools for fishing" to powered flight, and then 100 years later, sending an object completely outside of our solar system. If we're not the only ones, and their "enlightenment" evolution started 100 million years before ours did then they could be 100 million years more advanced than us. And at almost any reasonable pace, could have inhabited the entire galaxy in a less than 50 million years, give or take 10 or 20 million years.
Evolution started here some 3.85 billion years ago, but went through no less than 5 global mass extinctions, sometimes losing possibly as much as 95% of all life on the planet.
Even with all that it still produced us in 3.85 billion years, the solar system being a mere 4.6 billion years old and the Milky Way being no less than 13 billion years old.
So where are they? That's an awful lot of time to squeeze in a few civilizations forming, when it can only take 100 million years to go from rodents to homo sapiens, even with a global extinction in the middle (which arguably started the process off by removing the dominant species).
Never actually being able to travel between solar systems is one answer, but there are many other more sobering ones also.
Perhaps intelligent life always kills it's planet and dies off.
Perhaps intelligent life always kills itself.
The famous "Prime Directive", and somehow they never screw up.
Perhaps life always gets reset by global extinction event, somehow we've just managed to hang on a bit longer.
Hopefully, it's something like the last one, and we can get mobile before it happens again.
Fermi's such a killjoy.
CraigL
The problem I have with Fermi is that it tends to assume we are somehow special, or at least fairly advanced ourselves.
But knowing we may just be one of billions of similar planets consider instead the possibility that life is common throughout the universe. So 50 million years ago some civilization evolved significantly farther along than we have and developed the means to travel the universe - why would they have any particular interest in us over any of the other billions of planets?
We could essentially be the ants in the universe - when was the last time you visited an ant colony and had a conversation with them? You may have interacted with some ants in your house in a very limited fashion, but it's pretty likely you aren't aware of, interested in, or likely to ever vist the colony of ants that lives in a crack beneath the sidewalk on the corner of 3rd & East 66th street in NY - or any of the billions of other colonies on earth. It's estimated there are 1 million ants for every human on earth - so even if you're an ant researcher you'll never come in contact with most ant colonies, and it's equally likely that most ants won't come in contact with humans, and even when they do it's likely the ants have no awareness of humans as another form of intelligent life. There's even very little likelihood that one ant colony will ever come in contact with any other. So why would it be any different for us on a universal scale given our known physical limitations?
In fact it seems entirely likely, given the time frames we're talking about, that there are multiple extremely advanced species in the universe that are interacting all the time - and we're just completely oblivious. We're the ants on the picnic table while two people chat about the weather - we can't hear what they're saying, wouldn't understand it if we could, and don't even have the ability to comprehend their state of existence...
Yet.
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Actually, Fermi's point was in 50 million years, they could have visited ALL of those planets, every single one. So even if we were the very last one investigated, it'd still only take 50 (+/-) million years. And in the 4.6 billion year lifetime of our planet, that's ridiculously short. It really has nothing to do with visiting here to chum it up with us, but rather because this is a habitable planet worth exploring.
Course, that's all considering that every life-forms idea of "habitable" is consistent. Although, given the manner in which we've been able to synthesize the RNA bases we have, it seems likely that this is most likely habitable by many standards. Again, under the assumption that life formed spontaneously here rather than being delivered by some means.
And your ant analogy brings up another point, any lifeform that's been able to conquer solar systems, why would we be anything more interesting to them than ants are to us? If they had shown up here, why would we be so special that they'd hide? If they are the apex predators of the galaxy, why not just take what they want? We do it all the time, we destroy all manners of things because our lifestyles require it; we are the apex predator on earth, and there's very little we don't just take when we want or "need" it.
Don't get me wrong, I really want to believe there is life everywhere and that we will get to explore it at some point. But when you really, really think about it in a galactic or even just planetary timescale, it's very hard to explain why we've been left alone. And by "we" I mean our water-rich moderate temperature habitable planet, not humans or life here.
CraigL
What were the odds of life starting on Earth? How do you calculate those odds? Was it pretty much inevitable? Or was it damn-near impossible?
For all we know, when life happened on Earth, God might've been like, "whoah, I did not expect that at all." Why do we assume that life is destined to start out of nothing? Why is it so hard for us to imagine that maybe life on Earth is just INCREDIBLY lucky?
Yeah, I get it, there's LOTS of planets out there. But sheer quantity is not enough to convince me that life exists anywhere else.
For all we know, when life happened on Earth, God might've been like, "whoah, I did not expect that at all." Why do we assume that life is destined to start out of nothing? Why is it so hard for us to imagine that maybe life on Earth is just INCREDIBLY lucky?
Yeah, I get it, there's LOTS of planets out there. But sheer quantity is not enough to convince me that life exists anywhere else.
But that's still a very human-centric view; it assumes that exploring every habitable planet would be a goal of an advanced life form, and that exploring would involve some sort of direct interaction, and that once they saw we were here they'd have any interest in trying to contact us.
Even assuming a species did start looking for other plants with life on them to explore - I'm sure the first inhabited planet they find is pretty exciting, as are the next few. After about 100 or so maybe the excitement wears off, and after 1000 or 10,000 the new planets and species are just a footnote in some galactic wikipedia ('mostly harmless' perhaps?). So with billions of potentially habitable planets what are the chances we'd be anything they hadn't seen many times before? And if they can tell that from a distance there's really no reason to bother stopping in.
Back to the ants analogy - if you were walking down the street and some ants were crawling around a hole in the ground would you stop and try to communicate with them? Or would you - at most, assuming you even noticed them - think 'huh, ants!' and keep on walking?
I didn't say they were 'apex predators' of the galaxy. It's a standard science fiction trope to have aliens invade earth for our resources, but realistically how likely is it we'd have anything they'd want? Again, it gets back to our inflated view of our own importance. It's a big universe, and this is a small planet. I'm pretty sure any resources we've got here are far more abundant elsewhere.
And I don't think we'd be so special that they'd try to hide, any more than we'd try to hide from the ants... but while you're busy not trying to hide from the ants do you think they're really aware of you as another life form? Maybe if you start stomping on them - but then we're back to the million ants for every person issue. You could spend your days stomping on every ant you can find, and most ants on earth won't ever have any awareness of your existence.
I really feel the opposite. I think it's folly to assume that the make-up of our planet would make it of interest to other life forms once they've become sufficiently advanced enough to travel the universe. It's just another ant hill, in a universe full of ant hills.
My personal theory is that at least one intelligent species has visited our planet. They took one look at humanity and left the solar system at Warp Factor 8 screaming in horror. As they left they created a force field at the edge of our solar system that will never allow us to get out. They then broadcast a warning to the other intelligent species in the universe to avoid us like the plague.
What is this, South Park?
The idea that aliens couldn't have visited without us knowing is just as silly as the same applied to time travelers. Anyone that is advanced enough to do either is advanced enough to do it without people at a lower level of technology (us) being able to detect them. Furthermore, they'd be advanced enough to know why that is a good idea. Hell, we know that and we can't conceive of a way that FTL or Time travel could be possible. It's simple logic to deduce that they'd know it too.
Anyway, lots of planets! And a couple billion stars in our one galaxy...one of many that we know about...if nothing else, it's awesome to contemplate.
Anyway, lots of planets! And a couple billion stars in our one galaxy...one of many that we know about...if nothing else, it's awesome to contemplate.
Actually, if you follow South Park cannon, the entire planet Earth is just one big reality show for aliens, and we're darned lucky that they didn't cancel us.
Anywho, show of hands -- who's looking forward to Dark Skies?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K8iLp1xQtPQ
Actually, if you follow South Park cannon, the entire planet Earth is just one big reality show for aliens, and we're darned lucky that they didn't cancel us.
They then did an episode where we were visited by aliens, and failed to pass a "Space Cash" test, so they sealed us off from the rest of the galaxy
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pinewood_Derby_(South_Park))
Haha. I remember that episode. Not a particularly great one, but still pretty good.
Haha. I remember that episode. Not a particularly great one, but still pretty good.
Baby-Fart Mcgee-Zax
At least 8.8 billion Earth-size, just-right planets found, study says
http://www.foxnews.com/science/2013...rth-size-just-right-planets-found-study-says/
I had already seen 'The Fourth Kind' a few months earlier, and that had pretty much taxed out my patience/interest.
And I can recall 'Fire In The Sky' from umpteen years ago - also a slo-show. Zzzz...
And then there was 'Communion' - <nodding off just recollecting about this collection>
http://www.foxnews.com/science/2013...rth-size-just-right-planets-found-study-says/
I turned it off half-way in - too boring.
I had already seen 'The Fourth Kind' a few months earlier, and that had pretty much taxed out my patience/interest.
And I can recall 'Fire In The Sky' from umpteen years ago - also a slo-show. Zzzz...
And then there was 'Communion' - <nodding off just recollecting about this collection>
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