99 réponses à ce sujet

[laudable11]

Jonesey2k wrote...

Not in our lifetime anyway!
Was anyone else hoping that when they thought nuetrinos had went FTL it was true?

Hell yeah!

[lv12medic]

The Higg's Boson (and accompanying Higg's Filed) is great for describing how things have mass but I think were stuck with the boring non-fantasitcal stuff we have now until we can better understand how gravity works. Gravity is pretty much a big kick in the quads (hah hah I'm so funny) when you go to the sub-atomic level uless you want to go into String Theory. Loops, and strings, and membranes and multi-dimensionality and a big headache.

But have no fear because Starbrat is here!

[Fozee]

Tokion wrote...

Naugi wrote...

Looking forward to the first contact war when we finally make out there ...

First contact war with M4A1 and AK47? WE ARE NOT READY PEOPLE!!

Not exactly the cutting edge of our weaponry

[mauro2222]

Naugi wrote...

Looking forward to the first contact war when we finally make out there ...

Looking forward to present you as the cancer of society.

Even if we achieve a viable space travel, we are too primitive and to spread our stupid culture to the stars is like giving an infection to the galaxy.

[Sumthing]

Swordfishtrombone wrote...

Very unlikely that it is possible to prevent particles from interacting with the higgs, to reduce or eliminate their mass - and even more unlikely that it is possible to do for large scale objects. And if it is theoretically possible in some way, I suspect that the energies needed to achieve such a feat would make it practically impossible.

And even if you could eliminate the mass of an object (without damaging or destroying the object), that wouldn't mean that that object would be able to travel faster than light. It would mean that it would be able to reach light speed, but not exceed it.

Such a technology, if it were to turn out to be possible, would make travelling between stars a little more plausible - travel times would be in terms of years and decades, instead of tens or hundeds of thousands of years.

I am pessimistic on this issue though - I suspect humanity will not achieve that kinds of speeds, and I really don't think that there's a "star treck" or "mass effect" kinda future in store for us - or any other intelligent species in our universe.

But what about the sheer number of planets in our galaxy? There are too many to rule out the possibility of sentient life forms. I mean, there is an estimated 400 billion planets in our solar system alone, it seems rather shortsighted to assume that.

[Exeider]

even though we have only seen the foot prints of the Higgs, what this confirms is that the Higgs Mechanism is real, THAT is Mass Effect, the Higgs mechanism is what gives matter it's mass, the Higgs Boson is the after effect of the mechanism. To control the mechanism, would allow effects like Mass Effect to occur, and BEYOND, the ability to hold wormholes open using exotic matter created by manipulation of the Higgs Field, it would allow us to be able to create wormholes, and that my friends is something that even Mass Effect, Star Trek, you name it, hasn't had us have.

If we figure this out, we could leap ahead hundreds, maybe even thousands of years in propulsion technology.

[Exeider]

doublepost /10char

Modifié par Exeider, 08 juillet 2012 - 07:24 .

[Zaxares]

Exeider wrote...
To control the mechanism, would allow effects like Mass Effect to occur, and BEYOND, the ability to hold wormholes open using exotic matter created by manipulation of the Higgs Field, it would allow us to be able to create wormholes, and that my friends is something that even Mass Effect, Star Trek, you name it, hasn't had us have.

Exciting stuff, but you never know... Whatever might come through the wormhole may not be pleasant.

[Exeider]

Zaxares wrote...

Exeider wrote...
To control the mechanism, would allow effects like Mass Effect to occur, and BEYOND, the ability to hold wormholes open using exotic matter created by manipulation of the Higgs Field, it would allow us to be able to create wormholes, and that my friends is something that even Mass Effect, Star Trek, you name it, hasn't had us have.

Exciting stuff, but you never know... Whatever might come through the wormhole may not be pleasant.

hey, like anything, we wouldnt send humans through one unless we were damn sure it would work correctly.
-Æ

[SavagelyEpic]

Exeider wrote...

Zaxares wrote...

Exeider wrote...
To control the mechanism, would allow effects like Mass Effect to occur, and BEYOND, the ability to hold wormholes open using exotic matter created by manipulation of the Higgs Field, it would allow us to be able to create wormholes, and that my friends is something that even Mass Effect, Star Trek, you name it, hasn't had us have.

Exciting stuff, but you never know... Whatever might come through the wormhole may not be pleasant.

hey, like anything, we wouldnt send humans through one unless we were damn sure it would work correctly.
-Æ

Unless Loki comes through it first while we're not and then tries to enslave all of humanity.

[Sumthing]

SavagelyEpic wrote...

Exeider wrote...

Zaxares wrote...

Exeider wrote...
To control the mechanism, would allow effects like Mass Effect to occur, and BEYOND, the ability to hold wormholes open using exotic matter created by manipulation of the Higgs Field, it would allow us to be able to create wormholes, and that my friends is something that even Mass Effect, Star Trek, you name it, hasn't had us have.

Exciting stuff, but you never know... Whatever might come through the wormhole may not be pleasant.

hey, like anything, we wouldnt send humans through one unless we were damn sure it would work correctly.
-Æ

Unless Loki comes through it first while we're not and then tries to enslave all of humanity.

Maybe it will be like Doom 3.

[Jonesey2k]

Just be sure to name the first ship Event Horizon....

[Reptilian Rob]

mauro2222 wrote...

Naugi wrote...

Looking forward to the first contact war when we finally make out there ...

Looking forward to present you as the cancer of society.

Even if we achieve a viable space travel, we are too primitive and to spread our stupid culture to the stars is like giving an infection to the galaxy.

+1000.

[The Angry One]

mauro2222 wrote...

Naugi wrote...

Looking forward to the first contact war when we finally make out there ...

Looking forward to present you as the cancer of society.

Even if we achieve a viable space travel, we are too primitive and to spread our stupid culture to the stars is like giving an infection to the galaxy.

Why do people assume any other alien culture would be fundamentally different?
Self-loathing gets us nowhere.

[Reptilian Rob]

The Angry One wrote...

mauro2222 wrote...

Naugi wrote...

Looking forward to the first contact war when we finally make out there ...

Looking forward to present you as the cancer of society.

Even if we achieve a viable space travel, we are too primitive and to spread our stupid culture to the stars is like giving an infection to the galaxy.

Why do people assume any other alien culture would be fundamentally different?
Self-loathing gets us nowhere.

Chances are if they have space travel (advance) they are pretty unified as a species, as any given speices would have to be extremely unfied to acheive such feats of technology. 

[The Angry One]

Reptilian Rob wrote...

The Angry One wrote...

mauro2222 wrote...

Naugi wrote...

Looking forward to the first contact war when we finally make out there ...

Looking forward to present you as the cancer of society.

Even if we achieve a viable space travel, we are too primitive and to spread our stupid culture to the stars is like giving an infection to the galaxy.

Why do people assume any other alien culture would be fundamentally different?
Self-loathing gets us nowhere.

Chances are if they have space travel (advance) they are pretty unified as a species, as any given speices would have to be extremely unfied to acheive such feats of technology. 

Or they competed with their rival nations for glory and resources.
Or they're unified because they were all conquered by a bunch of jerks.
There can be any number of reasons.

[Reorte]

Selfishness and conflict is built in to humans and most other animals. It evolved as a necessary survival technique. It's hard to imagine other species being massively different simply due to the necessities of survival although how far their society has overcome it is anyone's guess. Don't write us off too badly, we've still a ludicrous number of problems but quite a lot of human societies have come quite a long way. Hell, even in the most messed up parts of the world I imagine that most people living there would prefer the lunatics to stop blowing each other up so everyone can just get on with their lives.

[Sumthing]

I'm going to give a nuclear reactor to an anthill.

[Swordfishtrombone]

Sumthing wrote...

Swordfishtrombone wrote...

Very unlikely that it is possible to prevent particles from interacting with the higgs, to reduce or eliminate their mass - and even more unlikely that it is possible to do for large scale objects. And if it is theoretically possible in some way, I suspect that the energies needed to achieve such a feat would make it practically impossible.

And even if you could eliminate the mass of an object (without damaging or destroying the object), that wouldn't mean that that object would be able to travel faster than light. It would mean that it would be able to reach light speed, but not exceed it.

Such a technology, if it were to turn out to be possible, would make travelling between stars a little more plausible - travel times would be in terms of years and decades, instead of tens or hundeds of thousands of years.

I am pessimistic on this issue though - I suspect humanity will not achieve that kinds of speeds, and I really don't think that there's a "star treck" or "mass effect" kinda future in store for us - or any other intelligent species in our universe.

But what about the sheer number of planets in our galaxy? There are too many to rule out the possibility of sentient life forms. I mean, there is an estimated 400 billion planets in our solar system alone, it seems rather shortsighted to assume that.

I don't believe I said anything about ruling out the possibility of sentient lifeforms. I even REFERRED to "any other inteligent species" in our universe, which pretty much implies that I think that their existence is pretty likely.

Indeed, there may be other sentient lifeforms around the galaxy and the universe - we don't know. What I am saying is that the limitations on travel in the universe, with the laws of physics as we know them, it is unlikely that any sort of a galactic community of species is in the books. The distances are too great, and the light speed limitation makes communication between distant civilizations implausible.

Since accelarating to an appreciable percentage of the speed of light requires HUGE amounts of energy, and similar amounts of energy are needed to decelerate at the destination, I'm very sceptical that we'll ever reach, say, 50 % of the speed of light for any space ship, with an acceleration/deceleration time that isn't measured in years, decades or more. (As an object's speed increases, it's mass increases, and the energy required to accelerate it further increases, approaching infinity at light speed.)

Saying "hi" to a civilization a hundred light years from us, and them saying "hi" back, would take two hundred years, so even conversations through light-speed communication take dozens or hundreds of generations to exchange any meaningful information.

And that is, if you actually manage to FIND another civilization. We don't know how common or rare they are, but even at a density of, say, one advanced civilization in every cubic thousand-light-years of space (and that's optimistic), we'd also have to happen to match in the time dimension - they may be in their equivalent of "stone age" while we are in the space age, and by the time they reach space age, we'll be extinct.  There's just so many unknowns, that we can say nothing certain, but when you look at all the variables, and what is known, I think that, unfortunately, galactic communities of species like in Star Treck or Mass Effect will remain purely fictional.

Modifié par Swordfishtrombone, 08 juillet 2012 - 03:48 .

[AHadley23]

ME violates known physical laws in a variety of ways. So no, probably not gonna happen.

[/buzzkill]

[Sarah_SR2]

Despite all of the brilliant minds we have working on unlocking the universe's secrets, we are nowhere even close to fully understanding it. The universe may be infinite and there may be infinite questions that we can never answer. I'm just so confused about the conundrum of space. The universe is supposed to be 15 billion years old and we have observed galaxies 13.5 billion light years away. This means that surely all of the matter in our galaxy has travelled 13 billion light years in 15 billion years. As matter cannot travel anywhere near light speed, how did the atoms in our galaxy travel so far so quickly? Or am I completely missing something?!

[Swordfishtrombone]

Sarah_SR2 wrote...

Despite all of the brilliant minds we have working on unlocking the universe's secrets, we are nowhere even close to fully understanding it. The universe may be infinite and there may be infinite questions that we can never answer. I'm just so confused about the conundrum of space. The universe is supposed to be 15 billion years old and we have observed galaxies 13.5 billion light years away. This means that surely all of the matter in our galaxy has travelled 13 billion light years in 15 billion years. As matter cannot travel anywhere near light speed, how did the atoms in our galaxy travel so far so quickly? Or am I completely missing something?!

The answer to this dillemma, as I understand it, lies in the fact that the Big Bang wasn't an "explosion" in the traditional sense, where matter was flung away from a single point - rather it was a sudden expansion of space itself, and this expansion is continuing.

Mass cannot travel through space faster than the speed of light, but the space itself is stretching, carrying the matter with it - thus the distance between two distant points can increase faster than the speed of light (carrying the matter with it), without the matter itself moving IN space, at any light-speed-limit breaking speeds.

And matter CAN move at near light speed - just not at, or over the light speed limit. Though to accelerate mass to relativistic speeds takes a huge amount of energy; far more than we humans can practically put to the purpose of accelerating, say, a space ship.

[Sarah_SR2]

Ahh all that makes sense ) So basically it is space-time expanding and that expansion is gradually slowing. I wonder if the distance between 2 points in space remain static relative to each other even though the fabric of space is growing? So, a meter now is larger than it was a billion years ago in terms of the size of the fabric of space, but that meter is, has and will always be perceived by us to be the same distance no matter at what point in time we observe it? What I mean is, distances in space are fixed from our observational point of view and were are completely unaware of the expansion of space. Of am I just talking rubbish?

[Swordfishtrombone]

Sarah_SR2 wrote...

Ahh all that makes sense ) So basically it is space-time expanding and that expansion is gradually slowing. I wonder if the distance between 2 points in space remain static relative to each other even though the fabric of space is growing? So, a meter now is larger than it was a billion years ago in terms of the size of the fabric of space, but that meter is, has and will always be perceived by us to be the same distance no matter at what point in time we observe it? What I mean is, distances in space are fixed from our observational point of view and were are completely unaware of the expansion of space. Of am I just talking rubbish?

First, it's been discovered that supricingly, the expansion isn't gradually slowing - it is actually accelerating.

In the very early times after the Big Bang, there was a time called "inflation" when the expansion of space was vastly, VASTLY faster than it is today - the universe then underwent a sort of a phase change in that the inflation stopped, and the expansion continued at a more reasonable pace. However, that expansion is accelerating. (The existence of dark energy is thought to be the driving force behind this acceleration.)

Second, locally, gravity, and other forces, overwhelm the effect of the expansion of space - so space may be expanding even between, say, your nose and your toes, but you aren't getting stretched, because the electrostatic forces, chemical atractions between your cells easily overwhelm the very, very, very, very tiny expansion of space in our every day scale.

On the scale of our galaxy, the space between the edges of our galaxy may be expanding a little faster, but still not fast enough to overwhelm the gravity that is pulling everything together. So even on the galactic scale we don't see the effect of this expansion of space, because of gravity. Similarly, our local galaxy cluster is being kept together by the gravity of the nearby galaxies affecting each other, and overcoming the force of the expansion of space. (Indeed, galaxies can even move towards other galaxies - like the andromeda galaxy, which is on a collission course with our galaxy, ETA some few billion years.)

On the larger scale though, galaxy clusters are being pulled apart as the space between them stretches, carrying the clusters away from each other - the distances are too great for the gravities of the clusters to keep them together.

This is as far as I understand it - I'm not sure though whether the acceleration of the expansion means (and I would intuitively guess that it DOES mean) that in the distant future, the expansion rate is such that it'll start overwhelming gravity, so that first galaxy clusters will be torn apart, then galaxies, and on to smaller scales. You'd have to check with a cosmologist on that.

[Fozee]

The primary problem with near-light-speed travel isn't necessarily the speed, but how long it would take us to reach that speed without killing all of the humans on board immediately.