Interstellar Hydrogen Prevents Light-Speed Travel? 546
garg0yle writes "As if relativity wasn't enough to prevent us traveling at light speed, Professor William Edelstein of the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine is now claiming that the interstellar hydrogen, compressed in front of the ship, would bring the journey to a shocking end. 'As the spaceship reached 99.999998 per cent of the speed of light, "hydrogen atoms would seem to reach a staggering 7 teraelectron volts," which for the crew "would be like standing in front of the Large Hadron Collider beam."'"
Fuckin' Noobs (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Fuckin' Noobs (Score:5, Informative)
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Re:Fuckin' Noobs (Score:5, Informative)
The Bussard Collector is part of a Bussard Ramjet [wikipedia.org].
The Bussard ramjet is a system of spacecraft propulsion proposed in 1960 by the physicist Robert W. Bussard. A moving spacecraft would use enormous electro-magnetic fields to collect and compress hydrogen from the interstellar medium. The hydrogen would be forced into a progressively constricted magnetic field, which would compress it until thermonuclear fusion occurs. The magnetic field would then direct the heated gas in the direction opposite to the intended direction of travel, thereby accelerating the vessel.
More generally [wikipedia.org].
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Star Trek? Bussard Ramjets were popularized by Larry Niven [larryniven.org].
Yes, this thread started on deflector dishes, a 'trek tech. Then Bussard Collectors were added in a reply, also a 'trek tech. They're not funneling the hydrogen at speed into a fusion reactor, merely collecting it, but they do use it to mitigate the interstellar gas pressures that are the subject of TFA.
If you really want to split hairs, Tau Zero pre-dates the Niven works by a few years.
Re:Fuckin' Noobs (Score:5, Insightful)
UM, I thought the plan was to scoop them up and use them for fuel, ie. you WANT those hydrogen atoms to pile up in front of the ship.
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The guy is a prof in a Medical school. What does he know about physics!?
Because the guy's a Harvard trained PhD physicist with relevant research interests, who also happens to be teaching at the Department of Radiology at Hopkins, that's why.
Damn it, now they tell me (Score:5, Funny)
And I was just about to get into my 99.999998% lightspeed spaceship.
Re:Damn it, now they tell me (Score:5, Insightful)
Aside from the current nonexistence of such a craft, that really does count as the faulty premise with Edelstein's conclusion...
Why would you go that fast (presuming you can't go much faster, of course)? It takes exponentially more energy to accelerate as you approach the speed of light, but that doesn't get you to your destination all that much faster. At a mere 99.9% of the speed of light, you spend less than one extra hour of travel (externally measured, of course) per month. For a "realistic" trip to nearby stars, that means an extra day and a half out of the 4.37 years to get to Alpha Centauri.
For relatively local trips, the difference amounts to a triviality - And longer trips simply will never happen unless we have some breakthrough that makes Star-Trek-like warp engines a reality.
Re:Damn it, now they tell me (Score:5, Insightful)
Well, the only material difference is the time dilation factor for the person in the spaceship. At 99.9% the speed of light, that factor is about 22 - i.e. the 4.4 years seems to take only about 0.2 years, or 10 weeks. At 99.999998% of the speed of light, it is almost exactly 5000 - which means the trip would seem to pass in about 7 hours. This is ignoring the general relativistic effects of acceleration and deceleration.
So, it's a material difference to the person traveling, but not so material to the observer stationary relative to Alpha Centauri.
Re:Damn it, now they tell me (Score:4, Interesting)
Accelerating to 99.999998% of light speed in 3.5 hours would be a somewhat dizzying experience. Especially since you'd actually experience an acceleration equivalent to going to 5000 times light speed in a pure Newtonian universe. We're talking more than 500.000km/s^2 here -- or 50 million g.
Re:Damn it, now they tell me (Score:4, Funny)
Apples and oranges. Speed != acceleration.
I simply omitted the "in 3.5 hours" which were in the previous sentence. I presumed my readers would be sentient.
Re:Damn it, now they tell me (Score:4, Informative)
It really depends on what you think is relevant. For example if the purpose is to do research for people on Earth, you probably are interested (at least in part) in the time taken for the round trip, and how long people on Earth have to wait to see the benefits of their investment. If you are looking at colonization then you are probably more interested in the amount of time as experienced by the people travelling on the ship. In this case the difference between 99.9% of the speed of light, and 99.99% of the speed of light is significant.
To make the example concrete, let us take your example of Alpha Centuri:
Distance: ~ 4 light-years.
Time (Earth observer): 4 years and 1.5 days
Gamma factor*: 22.4
Time (Ship observer): 65 days
Time (Earth observer): 4 years and part of a day.
Gamma factor*: 70.7
Time (Ship observer): 20.5 days.
So from the point of view of the *crew* the journey takes about a third the time, although from Earth you are correct in stating they are essentially the same.
* The gamma factor, or time dilation factor (or length contraction factor), is given by special relativity. If you speed is v and the speed of light is c then
Gamma factor = 1/sqrt(1-(v/c)^2)
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Yep, round-trip time from Earth is important. One-way time is only important if 1) you don't plan on returning home, and 2) you actually know where you're going. Without sending probes or whatever to various star systems, and getting data back from them showing what's there, then any one-way colonization ship isn't going to have a viable destination. It would spend way too much time jumping from star to star until you find something suitable.
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For relatively local trips, the difference amounts to a triviality
For relatively local trips, especially considering that you have to spend half the trip turned around and decelerating, there's going to be a point well before nine-tenths of C that the cost of further acceleration vastly outweighs the value of getting to the destination faster. Without knowing what the cost of energy is going to be if and when we can build propulsion systems capable of relativistic travel, I couldn't say where the point of diminishing returns would be, but for in-system travel, I'd be will
You forgot to account for relativity. (Score:5, Informative)
Sagan talks about this in Cosmos. If a theoretical spaceship accelerated constantly, it could traverse the entire universe in a mere 50 years -- but by the time it returned earth would be long gone.
Conceptually -- the universe has no "size" for a photon in a perfect vacuum. From the point of view of this theoretical photon, it is created in a distant star and intersects with your eye instantaneously. From our point of view it could take millions of years.
Considering that mass is what prevents light-speed travel (as well as the density of the medium being travelled through), that implies an interesting relationship between space-time and the higgs boson.
The universe is stranger than any fiction.
Re:Damn it, now they tell me (Score:4, Insightful)
If you go faster, you get less time to do.. whatever you'd want to do during the flight. If you <i>want</i> to work slower, slow down the computer running your brain.
Oh, you were planning to go in a biological body? Shame on you, that will never happen when uploading makes it so much cheaper.
Do keep up, dear boy... (Score:5, Insightful)
1) Warp drive doesn't posit a traditional "go-very-fast-through-normal-space" type of spacecraft engine - it warps[*] space-time (hence the name!) in front of and behind the spacecraft - see here [wikipedia.org] for an explanation. The spacecraft itself is sitting in a bubble of normal space, possibly even at rest.
2) Um, ramjets [wikipedia.org], anyone ?
Seriously, any number of sci-fi authors have covered this problem in enormous detail over the last few decades
Simon
[*] And because this is
Re:Do keep up, dear boy... (Score:5, Funny)
You did not just link me to a astrophysics article of wiki that's worse than tv tropes for me
I'm at 8 articles from just the first link you provided.
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Re:Do keep up, dear boy... (Score:5, Insightful)
Yes, any number of sci-fi authors have handwaved around these problems for the last few years. Actual scientists, not so much. And, as with TFA, the conclusions of the ones that have been less than sanguine. (From the POV of actually doing it.)
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Yes, any number of sci-fi authors have handwaved around these problems for the last few years. Actual scientists, not so much. And, as with TFA, the conclusions of the ones that have been less than sanguine. (From the POV of actually doing it.)
Robert W. Bussard (August 11, 1928 – October 6, 2007) was an American physicist who worked primarily in nuclear fusion energy research. He was the recipient of the Schreiber-Spence Achievement Award for STAIF-2004.[1] He was also a fellow of the International Academy of Astronautics.
See also, Bussard ramjet http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bussard_ramjet [wikipedia.org]
Without a ramjet, you'd probably run out of fuel before reaching 99.999998 per cent of the speed of light.
Re:Do keep up, dear boy... (Score:5, Interesting)
And if you actually read the Wikipedia article you link to, rather than just drooling over the qualifications of the inventor, you'll find that as people have actually began to seriously study it - there are now significant doubts as to how well it will work. (Even assuming we figure out how to do the parts Bussard handwaved into existence, like the magnetic scoop.) In addition, even if it does work, it may be subject to the problems outlined in TFA.
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Re:Do keep up, dear boy... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Do keep up, dear boy... (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Do keep up, dear boy... (Score:5, Informative)
Asimov worked specfically as a Munitions Chemist in WW2, alongside several other SF authors, including E. E. "Doc" Smith. Some of Isaac's war era work was classified well beyond that time (T.S. - 50 year to review at one time, according to Freedom of Information Act requests) and now seems to have become a matter of rumor and fallen from the official records, part of an interesting bunch of mostly unconfirmable claims suggesting that he, R A Heinlein, Jack Williamson, and maybe several other SF authors were consulted with regard to the Manhattan project just before Truman was informed. While that appears to be undocumented, There are Heinlein's own printed remarks about having two positions in the war, one of which he could talk about, and Larry Niven's comparison of what he and Jerry Pournelle did in advising the Bush administration after 9/11 to what a group of unspecified SF writers did in WW2, to make the rumors at least a trifle plausible.
Re:Do keep up, dear boy... (Score:5, Informative)
1) Proposed by the physicist Miguel Alcubierre, popularised by Star-Trek.
2) Proposed by the physicist Robert W Bussard (hence "Bussard Ramjet"), popularised by Larry Niven (the author), and even referred to by Carl Sagan on TV and in books...
Various other authors have used the same ideas. Perhaps I ought to have mentioned that I'm a physicist too... And the gentle humour regarding tense was supposed to clue you in that I wasn't suggesting we had a practical solution just yet... I wish I'd spelt "two thoughts" correctly, though.
Simon
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(Yes, I know spelled can be spelled "spelt", but it makes me cringe seeing it that way.)
Your country of origin colours your perception of spelling.
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Personal Pet Peeve:
Americans who butcher the queen's english and then cringe when they hear/see it spoken/written correctly.
Re:Do keep up, dear boy... (Score:5, Interesting)
I wondered why they didn't run them in series. Cumulative thrust would have put the ship closer to light speed.
Not necessarily. You are actually fusing those hydrogen atoms, turning them into helium. The output of one ramjet has less hydrogen than went into it. Yes, you could fuse that hydrogen/helium exhaust into heavier elements but it won't release as much energy. Basically you'll be adding mass to your spacecraft by putting another engine on but you won't be increasing your thrust as much as you may think.
You might eke out a bit more acceleration with another engine in series but it's probably not worth it. You don't want to put them in parallel on a small ship either, for several reasons. For example, the magnetic fields that funnel material into the engine are supposed to extend in a cone far in front of the engine. Two engines that are close together will have their magnetic fields interact, complicating the management of those fields. Another concern would be properly adjusting those engines to maintain even thrust on both sides. When you're traveling at a significant fraction of the speed of light a slight variation in the hydrogen input of one engine could tear apart your spaceship pretty easily.
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You know until we fix the relativity thing, I think we need to just ignore all the other silly problems of near light travel.
Hell that pesky E=Mc2 formula makes even getting to 1/2 the speed of light a massive pain in the ass.
Scientific though experiments are fun and all, but I'd rather they figure out a propulsion system that can generate enough power to get a 1 person spacecraft hit 1/4 the speed of light without needing nearly the energy of an entire planet.
"I'm on the return trip, let's suck up jupiter
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Remember, before Bell Aircraft came along and just did it, scientists opined that breaking the sound barrier was impossible too.
No they didn't. It was understood since the nineteenth century that the "sound barrier" was an engineering problem, not a scientific one.
Let's just hope... (Score:4, Funny)
Let's just hope the engine controls aren't made by Toyota, or it'll be hitting that speed whether the crew want or not.
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we can also ignore the fact that the Parts worked perfectly, it's the SOFTWARE that was screwed up. That was made by Toyota, tested by toyota, and Approved by toyota.
As to the GP, GM "pieces of shit' are mostly china parts assembled in mexico or Canada. You cant buy an American car anymore. They dont exist.
Pffft... (Score:2)
Just engage the Edelstein compensators.
Come to think of it, this professor is probably hoping to have some scifi tech named for him.
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I thought that they just called it navigation shielding, originally they just talked about it to protect against asteroids, but looks like they would be far more useful against hydrogen.
simple solution: (Score:5, Funny)
put a hydrogen-atom-splitter on the bow of the ship, they'll just get cut in half and fall out of the way.
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dont forget to reverse the polarity of the bow deflector
Re:simple solution: (Score:5, Funny)
You joke, but that might be an actual solution. If you can go that fast, why not postulate some other technology. Something that causes hydrogen to have a 50% probability of being on the left, 50% on the right. Just for a microsecond. Let it collapse back to the middle once you've gone past.
Really you'd want to create some sort of probability donut. Fly right through the middle. I propose calling it the Homer-Schrodinger shield.
Re:simple solution: (Score:5, Funny)
LHC (Score:4, Funny)
"hydrogen atoms would seem to reach a staggering 7 teraelectron volts," which for the crew "would be like standing in front of the Large Hadron Collider beam."
Wow, free energy!
Oh noes (Score:4, Funny)
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That's pretty damned slow when it comes to interstellar travel. Alpha Centauri (or is it Proxima?) would take a four year journey one way, and that's the second closest star to the earth.
Re:Oh noes (Score:5, Informative)
10% of the speed of light is 67 million miles per hour.
Helios 2 - fastest manmade object ever - went about 150,000 mph.
http://www.aerospaceweb.org/question/performance/q0023.shtml [aerospaceweb.org]
So, yeah even 1% of the speed of light would be 40x faster than anything else we've ever done.
Re:Oh noes (Score:4, Informative)
For large objects, that is. We regularly accelerate small particles to large fractions of lightspeed.
Clearly (Score:2)
If you want to travel light speeds, you have to convert yourself into light first.
Considering the energy required. . . (Score:5, Insightful)
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Well to you it might be only 2 minutes, but at the destination you will be 5.67 days late and will probably miss your connecting flight.
Re:Considering the energy required. . . (Score:4, Interesting)
Scientist-Schmientist (Score:2)
"Hydrogen atoms are unavoidable space mines."
Uhh.. Hey, Mr. Scientist... Ever hear of deflector shields? GOSH!
Going out on a (geeky) limb... Don't warp drives (again, geek-out time, so just accept they exist a la Star Trek) make a bubble that the ship moves through that goes faster than light, instead of accelerating the ship up to and beyond light speed? I believe I've read that Einstein's theories technically allow for something moving faster than light, if that something can manage to alter their local space-time?
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B: Star Trek ain't real.
But science keeps coming up with things based on it: cellphones, PDAs, netbooks, flash memory, etc. Everyone needs inspiration from something.
It's not about a velocity of light speed (Score:2, Funny)
Spacetime is curved, so even if the ship is traveling at 15mph, it reaches its destination in a time indicating FTL travel. The actual distance traveled is much shorter, though.
This is the stuff you should already know before you apply to Starfleet.
Ramscoop (Score:2)
So use a ramscoop to collect all the hydrogen that's in the way and use it for fuel. Sheesh.
easy solution (Score:5, Funny)
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Perspective (Score:4, Funny)
Do not try to dodge the atoms - that's impossible. Instead, only try to realize the truth: there are no atoms.
True, But Irrelevant... (Score:5, Insightful)
I don't think anyone seriously contemplating relativistic or FTL travel expects to be physically accelerated to such speeds. After all, if stationary interstellar hydrogen is effectively hitting you at teravolt levels, it means that every particle in your body (and the ship) has actually been accelerated to velocities equivalent to the particles in the LHC beam. Not bloody likely. We need warp drive, subspace, wormholes, or something else to solve the problem, not ridiculous conventional acceleration.
- Michael
Re:True, But Irrelevant... (Score:5, Funny)
Not bloody likely.
Likely bloody. Very bloody.
7 teraelectron volts? (Score:4, Funny)
I'll bet that would sting.
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What would happen? (Score:2)
Interesting - what WOULD happen if you stood in front of the Large Hadron Collider beam? Does it cut/burn like a laser, or something else? Just wondrin'...
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The collider would shut down for two years due to some component overheating.
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This is what happens http://lhc-machine-outreach.web.cern.ch/lhc-machine-outreach/components/beam-dump.htm [web.cern.ch]
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Fascinating limitation (Score:4, Insightful)
So, what he's saying is that the interstellar hydrogen density will limit us to no more than about 9600 light years nonstop at a continuous 1g acceleration/deceleration.
Given that even a matter/antimatter conversion drive would require about 116,000,000 tons of reaction mass (half antimatter) for every ton of payload, it would seem that we're going to be hitting a great many limits long before this particular limit begins to be meaningful.
incorrect (Score:2)
AFAIK Luke, Han and friends did not collide with some giant Hydrogen ollider.
They just nearly collide with a giant artificial moon.
Important fact missing (Score:2)
This is, of course, impossible. (Score:2)
All that says is that we can't hit lightspeed... (Score:2)
through the medium of interstellar space.
I'm pretty sure I can't travel at 30,000 mph through the ocean either. Through space, not as big a problem.
Most SF geeks would agree that if we're ever going to exceed C, we won't be doing it in meatspace.
Slight difference in density (Score:2)
The protons in the LHC are a little closer together than those in interstellar space. Density in interstellar space is about 1 atom per cubic centimeter. I can't readily find a number for the cross-sectional area of the LHC beam, but it is surely less than 1 cm^2 and each ring has 2835 x 10^11 protons over its 27 km length -- or better than 10^8 protons per cubic centimeter.
So no, it's not quite like standing in front of the beam from the LHC, not by a factor of a hundred million.
relativity (Score:2)
I guess that we're just lucky that Earth is moving at roughly the same speed as those hydrogen atoms.
Ionized hydrogen? (Score:2)
Physician, not physicist (Score:3, Funny)
What does this guy know about space travel? He's a prof at a medical school, FFS. This is rocket science, not brain surgery!
I'm disapointed (Score:2)
Economics (Score:5, Insightful)
Interstellar travel is fundamentally an economic paradox — ignoring, of course, such fantasies as Warp drives.
Sending a Shuttle-sized craft to Alpha Centauri in a matter of years would require roughly the current total energy consumption of humanity.
Only when our civilization advances to the point that we harness a significant portion of the Sun’s total energy output would the energy budget for interstellar travel approximate the same proportion of the energy budget we spend today on interplanetary missions.
One can suggest “sleeper ships,” but building mechanical devices that will survive thousands of years is as hard a problem as throwing them across light years of distance. Any gas will leak out of any container in such a timeframe, and no plastic or rubber seal would last a fraction of the time necessary. The next thought is to provide power to the ship during the long journey, but you need as much total energy as for getting there fast — and, if you can comfortably survive for millennia in interstellar space, why even bother with stars in the first place?
Oh — and the Fermi Paradox applies especially well. Assume that it takes even ten thousand years to colonize a remote solar system, and the entire galaxy would have been overrun by now if a colonizing civilization had started in the terrestrial Jurassic period.
Interstellar travel makes for great space opera, but it has no more bearing on reality than unicorns and dragons.
Cheers,
b&
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> I don't think that accelerating a shuttle-sized craft at 4 or 5g requires the current
> total energy consumption of humanity
Let's call it 4g in the spacecraft's frame, or a force of 4g*m (rest mass). Doing a quick special-relativistic approximation to the process, I get:
v = c * tanh(4gt/c)
as the spacecraft's velocity in the earth's frame as a function of time. Then its position is:
s = c^2/(4g) * ln(cosh(4gt/c))
or in other words:
cosh(4gt/c) = exp(s*4g/c^2
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> You don't need to go anywhere near lightspeed
The grandparent specifically said constant 4g boost to Alpha Centauri. That ends up near lightspeed.
But even if you restrict to just getting there in "years" (as great-grandparent did), you end up with an average speed of close to 0.5c if you want to stay under 10 years... Which means your top speed needs to be pretty close to c.
The point of the Fermi paradox... (Score:3, Insightful)
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It was meant to be funny...
my proposition (Score:3, Interesting)
There's an old saying, nothing focuses the mind like a firing squad. When faced with imminent death, humans are famously adept at coming up with novel solutions to complex problems. To that end, I propose we gather a collection of prominent physicists and place them in a ship capable of accelerating to near-light speed over a period of some years. Put locks on the controls so that they are unable to halt or alter the acceleration, then inform they have X years to come up with a way to avoid being smashed to death by interstellar gasses. Either they come up with a solution and are all saved, or they perish in a fiery ball of glory. Either way, they'll probably all have high schools named after them.
I said this two years ago in a Slashdot comment (Score:3, Interesting)
http://science.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=177080&cid=14696574 [slashdot.org]
The density of interstellar space is about one atom per cubic centimeter [hypertextbook.com]. If the spaceship were going near the speed of light (3 x 10^10 cm/sec), it would be hit by 3 x 10^10 relativistic particles per cm^2/sec. This is about the equivalent of one Curie [wikipedia.org] per cm^2, which would kill a human and cripple any electronics on board
A very heavy magnet could deflect the protons, but the neutral atoms would be unaffected by the magnetic field.
TSA (Score:3, Funny)
The real reason interstellar travel will never happen is the time in the security line with TSA would approach infinity for that sort of trip.
Take that, sci-fi debunkers! (Score:3, Interesting)
One of those classic complaints against popular sci-fi is that the ships are always pretty and "aerodynamic" (well, mostly, anyway) and that there's no need for this in a vacuum... Well, there you go, one good reason to have aerodynamic space ships. :)
Making spaceships sleek was a key part of making them fast in the Lensman books for more or less the same reason. (Smith's goofy FTL drive idea negated the mass of the ship, allowing the ship to instantly accelerate to a speed where thrust equaled drag)
Poul Anderson solved all this (Score:3, Insightful)
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Sure, it seems infinitely fast, but it's really not going to get us anywhere all that interesting in a single lifetime.
For the personal traveling at that speed, it most certainly WILL be a single lifetime. In fact, the trip would seem to them to be instantaneous.
Re:old news... (Score:4, Informative)
They already figured this out nearly a hundred years ago.
In fact, erosion by interstellar matter (both hydrogen and dust) was a major plot element in Arthur C. Clarke's 1986 novel The Songs of Distant Earth.
A while back, at the old 1994 Planetary Society conference on Interstellar Flight, I had a paper proposing a plasma erosion shield to protect an interstellar spacecraft-- I ought to dig that one up and put it on the web somewhere, but New Scientist ought to know about it, since they mentioned it in an article [newscientist.com] back in 1995.
Re:old news... (Score:5, Funny)
Thereby increasing, almost infinitely, the improbability of any FTL technology - thusly ensuring success for a system that harnesses improbability as a motive power.
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Is this it, Dr. Landis?
http://www.islandone.org/Settlements/MagShield.html [islandone.org]
Magnetic Radiation Shielding: An Idea Whose Time Has Returned?
Geoffrey A. Landis
Presented at the Tenth Biennial SSI/Princeton Conference on Space Manufacturing
May 15-19, 1991, Princeton, N.J.
posted with permission of author
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Re:old news... (Score:5, Funny)
...
Since most of the time the LHC is down that doesn't seem like a big problem :-p
Ok, big fan of the LHC, but just had to say it
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Since most of the time the LHC is down that doesn't seem like a big problem :-p
Not to mention, does that comparison mean anything to anyone else? I've never stood in front of the LHC personally and don't know anyone who has. I can -assume- it wouldn't be healthy, but... well, it doesn't really ring home with me. It's not like "Oh shit, interstellar FTL would be like standing in front of the LHC? Well the last time I did that, I got horrible hemorrhoids. Good to know. Note to self: do not drive faster than light to a nearby solar system."
How hard would it have been to make a more
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Not to mention, does that comparison mean anything to anyone else? I've never stood in front of the LHC personally and don't know anyone who has.
Talk to this guy [wikipedia.org].
That sounds like. . . (Score:3, Insightful)
That sounds like you're kind of proposing using air resistance to make your car go faster. Which, of course, doesn't make much sense. It's not that the hydrogen has 7 teV of kinetic energy - it's that your SPACESHIP has that energy, and is colliding with hydrogen which is (basically) at rest. You can't extract energy from the 'at rest' hydrogen atoms, because they don't have it. What would happen is that your collision with those molecules would likely destroy your ship (massive hull heating, until you get