We are smart.
Posted on 01/13/2016 9:28:58 PM PST by LibWhacker
It's a common theme in science fiction, but migrating to planets beyond our solar system will be a lot more complicated and difficult than you might imagine
The idea that humans will eventually travel to and inhabit other parts of our galaxy was well expressed by the early Russian rocket scientist Konstantin Tsiolkovsky, who wrote, “Earth is humanity’s cradle, but you’re not meant to stay in your cradle forever.†Since then the idea has been a staple of science fiction, and thus become part of a consensus image of humanity’s future. Going to the stars is often regarded as humanity’s destiny, even a measure of its success as a species. But in the century since this vision was proposed, things we have learned about the universe and ourselves combine to suggest that moving out into the galaxy may not be humanity’s destiny after all.
The problem that tends to underlie all the other problems with the idea is the sheer size of the universe, which was not known when people first imagined we would go to the stars. Tau Ceti, one of the closest stars to us at around 12 light-years away, is 100 billion times farther from Earth than our moon. A quantitative difference that large turns into a qualitative difference; we can’t simply send people over such immense distances in a spaceship, because a spaceship is too impoverished an environment to support humans for the time it would take, which is on the order of centuries. Instead of a spaceship, we would have to create some kind of space-traveling ark, big enough to support a community of humans and other plants and animals in a fully recycling ecological system.
On the other hand it would have to be small enough to accelerate to a fairly high speed, to shorten the voyagers’ time of exposure to cosmic radiation, and to breakdowns in the ark. Regarded from some angles bigger is better, but the bigger the ark is, the proportionally more fuel it would have to carry along to slow itself down on reaching its destination; this is a vicious circle that can’t be squared. For that reason and others, smaller is better, but smallness creates problems for resource metabolic flow and ecologic balance. Island biogeography suggests the kinds of problems that would result from this miniaturization, but a space ark’s isolation would be far more complete than that of any island on Earth. The design imperatives for bigness and smallness may cross each other, leaving any viable craft in a non-existent middle.
The biological problems that could result from the radical miniaturization, simplification and isolation of an ark, no matter what size it is, now must include possible impacts on our microbiomes. We are not autonomous units; about eighty percent of the DNA in our bodies is not human DNA, but the DNA of a vast array of smaller creatures. That array of living beings has to function in a dynamic balance for us to be healthy, and the entire complex system co-evolved on this planet’s surface in a particular set of physical influences, including Earth’s gravity, magnetic field, chemical make-up, atmosphere, insolation, and bacterial load. Traveling to the stars means leaving all these influences, and trying to replace them artificially. What the viable parameters are on the replacements would be impossible to be sure of in advance, as the situation is too complex to model. Any starfaring ark would therefore be an experiment, its inhabitants lab animals. The first generation of the humans aboard might have volunteered to be experimental subjects, but their descendants would not have. These generations of descendants would be born into a set of rooms a trillion times smaller than Earth, with no chance of escape.
In this radically diminished enviroment, rules would have to be enforced to keep all aspects of the experiment functioning. Reproduction would not be a matter of free choice, as the population in the ark would have to maintain minimum and maximum numbers. Many jobs would be mandatory to keep the ark functioning, so work too would not be a matter of choices freely made. In the end, sharp constraints would force the social structure in the ark to enforce various norms and behaviors. The situation itself would require the establishment of something like a totalitarian state.
Of course sociology and psychology are harder fields to make predictions in, as humans are highly adaptable. But history has shown that people tend to react poorly in rigid states and social systems. Add to these social constraints permanent enclosure, exile from the planetary surface we evolved on, and the probability of health problems, and the possibility for psychological difficulties and mental illnesses seems quite high. Over several generations, it’s hard to imagine any such society staying stable.
Still, humans are adaptable, and ingenious. It’s conceivable that all the problems outlined so far might be solved, and that people enclosed in an ark might cross space successfully to a nearby planetary system. But if so, their problems will have just begun.
Any planetary body the voyagers try to inhabit will be either alive or dead. If there is indigenous life, the problems of living in contact with an alien biology could range from innocuous to fatal, but will surely require careful investigation. On the other hand, if the planetary body is inert, then the newcomers will have to terraform it using only local resources and the power they have brought with them. This means the process will have a slow start, and take on the order of centuries, during which time the ark, or its equivalent on the alien planet, would have to continue to function without failures.
It’s also quite possible the newcomers won’t be able to tell whether the planet is alive or dead, as is true for us now with Mars. They would still face one problem or the other, but would not know which one it was, a complication that could slow any choices or actions.
So, to conclude: an interstellar voyage would present one set of extremely difficult problems, and the arrival in another system, a different set of problems. All the problems together create not an outright impossibility, but a project of extreme difficulty, with very poor chances of success. The unavoidable uncertainties suggest that an ethical pursuit of the project would require many preconditions before it was undertaken. Among them are these: first, a demonstrably sustainable human civilization on Earth itself, the achievement of which would teach us many of the things we would need to know to construct a viable mesocosm in an ark; second, a great deal of practice in an ark obiting our sun, where we could make repairs and study practices in an ongoing feedback loop, until we had in effect built a successful proof of concept; third, extensive robotic explorations of nearby planetary systems, to see if any are suitable candidates for inhabitation.
Unless all these steps are taken, humans cannot successfully travel to and inhabit other star systems. The preparation itself is a multi-century project, and one that relies crucially on its first step succeeding, which is the creation of a sustainable long-term civilization on Earth. This achievement is the necessary, although not sufficient, precondition for any success in interstellar voyaging. If we don’t create sustainability on our own world, there is no Planet B.
It better happen BEFORE this:
Isaiah 65:17
"See, I will create new heavens and a new earth. The former things will not be remembered, nor will they come to mind.
Revelation 21:1
Then I saw "a new heaven and a new earth ...
It already exists. Bob Lazaar worked on them at Area 51.
(I believe him, seriously)
Even if you got to your destination INSTANTLY; airport 'procedures' and 'safety' and 'security' and 'frisking' would make your 'trip' time quite long.
We are smart.
As no doubt many will say, how about water, oxygen, proximity.
I’m still puzzled over FTP!
“Are we not on an ark like this NOW?”
No, we are not. The Earth and like planetary bodies are too large to serve as interstellar transports. The asteroids to be used as the arks would require certain types of characteristics that cannot be accomplished with planetary bodies the size of the major terrestrial planets of this Solar System. They would have a mass small enough to be accelerated and decelerated with relatively practical methods of propulsion such as electric ion engines, solar sails, and so forth. They would have a mass large enough to provide the capacity to house an integrated economy for a substantial human community and self-sufficient economy inside the asteroid. They would need have a primarily nickel-iron composition with the strength to retain structural integrity despite internal mining, rotation for centrifugal simulated gravity, and accelerating forces for the voyages. These asteroidal transport craft would typically travel in convoy with other such craft to provide mutual support, and with smaller asteroidal service craft too small for a self-sufficient colony. The asteroidal transports would likely serve as permanent homes for most of their population, while some of the population would be expected to colonize other new asteroids and planetary bodies discovered on their journeys.
“1. Someone to DISprove Einstein’s FACT that NOTHING can exceed the speed of light. “
“2. Someone to invent the Warp Drive”
A professor at the university gave a lecture in 1985 denying humans would ever be able to accomplish interstellar space travel. We disputed him by pointing out that the use of asteroids to house large human colonies would travel slower than the speed of light throughout the Milky Way Galaxy over the period of numerous human generations, using the asteroid transports as permanent homes. Such interstellar space travel could be accomplished with the fundamental technologies already existing in 1965; i.e. electric ion engines and so forth.
LOL
All depends upon how many times faster than the speed of light you travel. Multiply it by 5, 10, 20, 100 times, and you've now got the ability to reach across the Milky Way galaxy with ease.
It may look like a fanciful concept from the vantage point of our current level of technological prowess (and understanding), but give it another century and it won't seem far fetched at all.
Your great grandchildren may well drive to Alpha Centauri one day.
I doubt it i had mumps as a child
If the Lord wills it. I don't expect to be around to see it, though.
But some of them are bound to taste like chicken!
We can make exception for chicken tasting creatures that come with 11 herbs and spices.
Here is are the problems I have with quantum entanglement.
They say that entanglement between two particles can occur over millions of miles. But just the distance part makes the theory untestable.
The big bugaboo , to me, is how do they know they have found ‘a pair’ ? Let’s say that a particle could be in one of six states. Up, Down, Left, Right, Top, Bottom. Assuming an infinite Universe, and an even distribution of states, then the number particles that could be in the same state as the ‘source’ particle is INFINITY/6. Or another way to look at it would be that you had a 1 in 6 chance of finding a matching pair between any two particles in the Universe, whether they are ‘entangled’ or not.
The last problem is that they say that determining the state of the source particle makes it change. Then they say that the other entangled particle changes instantly.
When they check the other particle, it’s state matches the original particle. But... if checking it causes it to change, then it wasn’t identical to the source and didn’t change in response to the source particle ‘instantly’. It didn’t change until it was checked. I don’t see how they can claim the second changes instantly to match the first when (1) they can’t verify it instantly, and (2) verifying it causes it to change and doesn’t even prove what state it was in before it was changed. The two ‘entangled’ particles may have been in different states, and the fact that after being tested, they match means nothing... really.
There are at least two reasons.
One is that it is very dangerous outside the Earth's Magnetic field. You are exposed to a vast amount of radiation completely up and down the EM spectrum. And that is constant. Then there is the chance you get blasted by a CME. One can shield the spacecraft, but more weight means more fuel to move the craft about. It would take a lot more than we have on spacecraft now to shield a crew safely. Even the Space Station is at risk from CME's and the crew must take shelter in a shielded room.
The second problem is the lack of gravity. Many say creatures(like man) can adapt to changes, but that it takes a long, long time (like thousands of years).
Not true.
Put humans in a weightless environment for a couple of months and their leg muscles will atrophy, and their bones turn to jello. Eventually, you would turn into a round ball with short flippers protruding from the ball.
Sure, we can 'rotate' the spacecraft to try and provide gravity , but that only works if the craft is designed in a particular shape that makes the spin useful and gives the crew access to the outer arc of that shape.
Artificial gravity (other than spin) could be used, but we're about as close to having a useful efficient anti-grav device that could be mounted in a space ship as we are to having a Warp Drive.
“and have spent a good deal of time reading what some heretical physicists “
I think you meant ‘theoretical’, but heretical is funnier.
: )
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