Will humans ever leave the solar system?

I believe most (if not all) people are unable to even begin to comprehend the nearly infinite distances involved with interstellar travel. I asked a few co-workers of mine if they thought human interstellar travel was possible and they all thought that it would only be a matter of time before some future variation of a star trek style warp drive or man made worm hole would be invented allowing humanity to begin to spread out among the stars.

Well, either of these very unlikely possibilities would require a new theory to replace Einsteins theory of relativity and would also mean that the speed of light would no longer be the ultimate speed limit.

Although worm holes may be possible, the mathematics that describe them also predict they would be incredibly tiny, small enough that only a single subatomic particle could enter one; an event that would completely destablilize it. As far a building a worm hole, the energies required may make constructing one completely unattainable.

So unless the universe is very different from the relativistic one Einstein describes we are left calculating how much energy is required to accelerate a given amount of mass (as well as accelerate that mass in the opposite direction to slow it down when reaching the selected destination) in a time frame that hopefully dosen't take many thousnds of years, (seeing as how impatiant us humans are, I can hear it now - "are we there yet?")

When looking at these numbers, it soon becomes obvious that the energy required to send even a very small ship with only a few passengers to the nearest star, Proxima Centauri, which is "only" 4.5 light years away, is greater then the sum of all of the energy generated by humanity throughout all of human history!

Besides the the challenge of storing that much energy safely, there are other issues that arise when approaching even a few percentage points of the speed of light. At such speeds, even the tiniest spec of dust will detonate on the windshield of your space craft with the force of an atom bomb. Also, the closer your ship gets to the speed of light, the more it's own mass increases, requiring ever more energy to accelerate it, until at the speed of light it's mass becomes infinite.

For these reasons, I believe that humans will never leave the solar system. We may one day completely populate our own solar system and may send un-manned probes to other stars and systems, but the time, radiation, distance, energy, and cost would be too great, if it's even possible at all. If it is possible, they why isn't the galaxy crawling with the first aliens that invented the technology?

I agree. Your posting reminded me of Fermi's Paradox: "So Where Are They?"

http://home.tiac.net/~cri/1998/alien.html

I would like to think we are someday going to leave our solar system for what is "out there", but since we are only setting our sites on the moon (again or for the first time - you decide), it will take a long time before that happens, if at all.

All makes sense ..... but at the same time humans never thought they would fly or reach the moon a thousand years ago !

I believe, given enough time, science and technology will make the impossible possible .....

Zero Point Energy seems a perfect source for space exploration ..... and who knows for sure whether aliens are not crawling the galaxy !!

Element 115 - ever seen Bob Lazar (former employee at Area 51) talk about how alien craft get here? Of course that depends on whether you believe him but take a look here: http://www.gravitywarpdrive.com/Element_115.htm
Basically it creates a warp in space that brings a distant point close. Reports of UFO's that suddenly take a sharp turn and then disappear is also thought to be their use of this technology.

Element 115

That's a track by a group called "Eat Static". I wondered what it was, now I know.

Um, and I don't see us even colonizing other planets in this solar system...I used to think we'd strike out into the universe, but I don't see any evidence of a serious desire to do it.

Maybe we'll have a half hearted pop at it when we've messed up the planet so much that we can't even breath.


CFU

Leaving our Solar System is not a question of if, but when. It's inevitable. The thing is, the pace of the whole thing will be much slower than people think. Even to travel to the nearest star, Proxima Centauri, and we were to figure out a way to travel at close to the speed of light (somehow) say maybe half the speed of light, it would take like 10 years to get there.....another 10 years to get back. The whole project would be half a lifetime. And really, there's nothing particularly special near Proxima Centauri.

Want something interesting like Chara A? It is 100 light years away! Traveling at half the speed of light will take 200 Earth years to get there!

so, short answer: yes, we will leave the solar system, but it won't be anything like Star Trek! You can't travel faster than the speed of light. And we can't fold space-time.

It's nice to imagine, though.

:rock: WP

This one covers a lot too as well as Lazar's background: http://www.gravitywarpdrive.com/Government_Scientist.htm
Professor Stephen Hawking has been saying lately that if the human race is to survive that we will need to eventually find other places to live than Earth.

By the time we messed up our planet to the point we need a new one, there just won't be enough time to do the proper exploration and colonization. Something like that would take centuries (refer to my comment above), unless some technological marvel is discovered that allows us to circumvent the limitations of the universe like the speed of light. Not likely to happen.

If we are at the point that we have to ditch the planet, I can picture an all-or-nothing approach in which perhaps 1000 colonization ships are built to house perhaps a million people. These ships fan out to the top-1000 most likely habitable planets closest to Earch with the "Hail-Mary" hopes of finding at least one planet that is livable. And then Mankind is rebuilt.

Not a very pretty picture, but the most likely scenario. So take care of our planet!

WP

When looking at these numbers, it soon becomes obvious that the energy required to send even a very small ship with only a few passengers to the nearest star, Proxima Centauri, which is "only" 4.5 light years away, is greater then the sum of all of the energy generated by humanity throughout all of human history!

Click to expand...

I saw on a TV special about relativity and space travel that attempting to accelerate a single atom to a relative speed of 1/2 the speed of light would take more than all the energy in the universe!!

So when the E.T. ships make sudden 90-degree turns I guess the question becomes: What is inertia and how can we control it? Isn't inertia the root of the problem (or at least a significant part)?

We need JS to post his opinion on this. In the mean time I found this:


Time, fuel, and distance are some of the problems we run into when considering interstellar travel. For example, if we were to build a rocket that would get us to Proxima Centauri, the nearest star besides the Sun, in less than 900 years, we'd need more fuel than there is mass in the universe! 1

http://www.nasa.gov/centers/glenn/research/warp/scales.html

Very interesting points.

Personally, I don't believe we will ever leave the solar system. As stated, the energy involved makes it certainly impractical, probably impossible.

I don't buy the "science will get us around it someday" or the "100 years ago people said ____ was impossible" arguments either. Certainly, we haven't learned all there is to know, and there's lots to discover and understand that we don't now. However, what we DO know and understand now is thousands of times greater than what was known and understood 100 years ago, and therefore we are much better able to make educated predictions about what will or won't be possible, no matter how much science advances.

All of this naturally leads to the E.T. arguments and questions, and leads me to believe that not only will we not leave, but nobody has come. I know a lot of people have seen things, and I don't know what they saw, but neither do they. Whatever it was, I'm betting it wasn't beings from another galaxy.

:candle:

Interesting reading, I look forward to following this thread.

:buddies:

So until Newton and Einstein are disproven it is quite apparent that interstelar travel is impossible. Unfortunately, every relativity experiment to date confirms Einsteins theories.

cchurchi said:

So until Newton and Einstein are disproven it is quite apparent that interstelar travel is impossible. Unfortunately, every relativity experiment to date confirms Einsteins theories.

Click to expand...

We don't have to "disprove". We just need to "bypass".
The best odds is to figure out how to fold space-time......we can call it 4th dimensional travel. I haven't got around to that yet..... :laughing:


WP

The best odds is to figure out how to fold space-time......we can call it 4th dimensional travel. I haven't got around to that yet.....

Click to expand...

Let us know when you do...I could do with a change of scenery.


CFU

Yes, if we could just force 2 supermassive black holes to orbit each other at near the speed of light, we could cause enough frame dragging to...


Oh dang, that is the recipe for time travel.

I will rent DUNE tonight and pay extra attention to the space folding scenes. Then all we will need is some SPICE!!!

Then all we will need is some SPICE!!!

Click to expand...

The Spice Must Flow.


CFU

Burning enough spice to travel to Proxima Centauri would release trillions of tons of CO2 causing "universal warming" thereby melting the martian polar ice caps, which will only add to the CO2 problem!

"Eever" can be such a strong word...

I believe we'll eventually leave the solar system, but most probably after doing a bit of "planet hopping" around our own back yard.