SPACE TRAVEL AND THE BENEFITS:

Discussion in 'Astronomy, Exobiology, & Cosmology' started by paddoboy, Jan 26, 2015.

  1. Seattle Valued Senior Member

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    Just curious...as a practical matter, do you think man will ever go to another galaxy? Do you think there is life anywhere in the universe that has gone from one solar system to another solar system?

    I know you can't know the answer. I'm just curious as to your educated guess or hunch.
     
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  3. paddoboy Valued Senior Member

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    No it is not Impossible. Highly difficult and beyond present day technology and knowledge, but it is not Impossible, and to say it is, is totally misinformative and naive.




    Like it or not, humans will in time learn to live on Earth in peace, harmony and without widespread poverty. I remain optimistic of that.
    And while that may take a while, as will stellar travel, in the course of time [that entity that you would dearly like to 'prove"does not exist] it will happen.
    Like I said, We, mankind were not born to stagnate on this fart arse little blue orb....just as we were not meant to stagnate on the African continent when we first evolved.
     
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  5. paddoboy Valued Senior Member

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    Interesting questions, and as you say, in reality unknowable at this time.
    I suppose my usual reply would be again useful. Given time. In fact it can be said that given time, all that is not forbidden by the laws of physics and GR may also happen.
    One of the reasons why I posted the thread about the earth like planets around an 11 billion year old star.
    Taking into account planetary migration, and life arising and evolving on one of those planets, that life has had plenty of time.
     
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  7. Seattle Valued Senior Member

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    I've seen you mention "planetary migration" several times. Could you explain what that means to you (in your usage of that term)?

    Regarding the idea that if something is possible then it therefore "may" happen. That's true enough of course...by definition I guess.

    However, the universe is roughly 14 billion years old and our solar system (and Earth) is 4.5 billion years old (not an insignificant period of time) but nothing like that has happened here yet so depending on what your prediction of available time for the future is there is no overwhelming reason to think that there is going to be anything other than more of the same.

    I understand that the interesting part of this idea is that man has only been around for 40,000 years (homo sapiens anyway) but whatever predicting we are doing isn't really based on much as it is (by necessity) based on a sample of one.
     
  8. paddoboy Valued Senior Member

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    Planetary migration helps explain the discovery of extra solar planets we call "Hot Jupiters", Jupiter sized planets or bigger with very short periodical orbits.
    They most probably occur in planetary proto disks at and near the time of planetary accretion, and caused by the Interactions of planets and other objects with smaller bodies, and gasses.
     
  9. Billy T Use Sugar Cane Alcohol car Fuel Valued Senior Member

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    I can also agree with that, but not with paddoboy's version, which is:
    If not forbidden by the laws of physics then...
    It will happen
    or at other times
    It is possible.

    For example, the laws of physics do not forbid making a radio isotope stable and in deed some not yet know technology MAY achieve that OR it may be impossible.* Certainly we can not conclude that it is possible to prevent radio isotopes from decaying simply because the laws of physics do not prevent making radio isotopes stable.

    * What we currently know is that temperature, pressure, chemical binding (to a stable element) and magnetic fields have no effect on the decay rate, so If forced to bet, I would put my money on the idea that it is impossible to stabilize a radio isotope.
     
    Last edited by a moderator: Jan 31, 2015
  10. Billy T Use Sugar Cane Alcohol car Fuel Valued Senior Member

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    I don't have a link; just known facts. Any level of genetic diversity desired is achieved with at least 100 million times less weight and food food requirements with a small liquid N2 Dewar, containing sperm from "n men" than by taking the n-men to Mars to fertilize the women the "the old fashioned" way.

    Even that Dewar probably is not necessary for genetic diversity as it is already possible to extract the DNA from one woman's gamete and add it to another woman's egg. I.e. two different half sets of DNA is all you need - both can come from females. It may not do a male's ego much good, to know that women soon may no longer need men to continue the human race.

    See: http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/a/a8/Parthenogenesis_-_Bischoff,_Steve_R_2010.tif
     
    Last edited by a moderator: Jan 31, 2015
  11. billvon Valued Senior Member

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    In his present form? No. But I suspect one of his descendents will.
    I suspect we will find a great many cases of panspermia out there - both accidental and intentional.
     
  12. Seattle Valued Senior Member

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    That statement is even more interesting...you feel that we will find this. That's even more "fantastical" (is that a word

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    ) in that not only would it happen but you feel that we would find it out (know of it).
     
  13. paddoboy Valued Senior Member

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    I speak in relation to the present subject of propulsion methods.
    Warping/curving of spacetime is evidenced and aligns with what GR says.
    Can we do it? Do wormholes exist? Do Tachyons exist? Can we create negative matter in great quantities? No, no, no and no! At this point in time!
    What does the future hold? I don't know, but please stop this nonsense about going to the stars as an impossible feat. Because it is not...pure and simple.
    Hard, Difficult and dangerous, yes, very much so, but again, given time, is achievable.
    NASA/JPL/Glenn Labs, 100 Year Star Ship Co, Tau Zero, are orginisations working towards this end, and they are all run by Intelligent reputable individuals like Marc Millis and Mae Jemison.
     
  14. Seattle Valued Senior Member

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    It's not a fact that it's an impossible feat but it is possible that it's an impossible feat and it's at least as likely as not that it won't happen IMO.
     
  15. paddoboy Valued Senior Member

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    As I have said Seatlle, given time, given time.
    A well worn still valid argument, how would someone just 250 years ago[ before electricity] view phones, radio, TV, computers, walking on the Moon today?

    A great Sci/fi writer once said words to the effect.
    "Any Sufficiently advanced civilisation, would appear as magic to us"
    Arthur C Clarke! Writer of a book of which the greatest Sci/Fi movie of all time was made. That was in 1968? and the movie,
    2001: A Space Odyssey
     
  16. Seattle Valued Senior Member

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    Yes, Sci-Fi is interesting (to some). I've never been that interested in it but I do get the appeal. Quoting a sci-fi writer though does nothing to buttress an argument

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    one way or the other.

    No one would argue that change and great technological advances aren't going to occur or that we can predict what life will look like in the future.

    However, as much as life has changed it has also stayed remarkably the same in other ways. We have more advanced gadgets now. Man's time on Earth isn't unlimited.

    All that I'm saying is that the distances to the stars are great and there are limits to how fast we can travel. I'm looking more at what is likely or probable.

    When the standard is only what is possible then it really does (to me) sound more like a religious argument of "is God possible". Sure, possible but not likely

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  17. billvon Valued Senior Member

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    Excellent example. And now we DO know how to make radioisotopes stable via neutron bombardment. An example is Tc-99 -> Tc-100 via neutron bombardment, then to Ru-100 via rapid beta decay which is a stable isotope. As recently as 100 years ago transmutation was thought to be the stuff of science fiction - impossible.
     
  18. Billy T Use Sugar Cane Alcohol car Fuel Valued Senior Member

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    No that is NOT making Tc-99 stable. That is transforming it into something else which is stable.
     
  19. paddoboy Valued Senior Member

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    Arthur C Clarke was far more than just a "Sci/Fi writer"
    He made a few amazing predictions....try google.

    Except some give that less credence than others.


    Correct, although the further we advance, the closer we come to the probability of out lasting the Earth's use by date. [or at least whatever we evolve into]

    Distances to the stars are certainly prohibitive, and distances to galaxies even more so. I don't need convincing of that. And to conquer those distances will be just as prohibitive and difficult

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    I don't need convincing of that either.

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    Except that "Is God possible" argument is not a scientific argument or solution.
    I remain optimistic, although I'm relatively an old bastard, that man may set foot on Mars before I kick the bucket.

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  20. Seattle Valued Senior Member

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    I agree that man will go to Mars at some point. Regarding Clarke, you know how the predicting business goes. You make a lot of predictions and some look good and those are the ones we talk about. The others...not so much

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    He predicted that we would be clearing the jungles with laser beams (not very environmental) and training chimpanzee to do our menial work.

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  21. billvon Valued Senior Member

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    Right. And thus someone who said "you can't make nuclear waste safe because you can't make nuclear waste stable!" would be wrong.

    You've posted a rationale of why going to another star via one method is hard. (Agreed; it is.) But someone is going to come along and do it a different way - a way that doesn't conflict with existing physics - and that rationale will still be valid, but irrelevant.

    Here's a good example:
    ================
    Put these three indisputable facts together:
    One: There is a low limit of weight, certainly not much beyond 50 pounds, beyond which it is impossible for an animal to fly. Nature has reached this limit, and with her utmost effort has failed to pass it.
    Two: The animal machine is far more effective than any we can hope to make.; therefore the limit of the weight of a successful flying machine can not be more than fifty pounds.
    Three: The weight of any machine constructed for flying, including fuel and engineer, cannot be less than three or four hundred pounds.
    Is it not demonstrated that a true flying machine, self-raising, self-sustaining, self-propelling, is physically impossible?
    — Joseph Le Conte, Professor of Natural History at the University of California, Popular Science Monthly, November 1888.
    ===============

    All those facts were true as far as we understood them at the time. Yet people built airplanes anyway by using engineering methods that animals could not use. Correct rationales; incorrect conclusions.
     
  22. Billy T Use Sugar Cane Alcohol car Fuel Valued Senior Member

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    to Billvon: I agree some false conclusions can follow from specific facts that were once believed to be true; but assuming one can go faster than light or separate inertial from gravitational mass or violate conservation of momentum are well established basic principles, not specific "believed facts"

    Here is what I said in post 64:

    "On (1a) refuting Special and General Relativity that clearly states, nothing, not even massless information, can travel faster than light.
    AND
    On (1b) that Inertia mass is not always the same as gravitational mass. Or in more direct relationship to rocket, made up of billions of atoms, can turn the inertial mass of every proton and neutron in those atoms to near zero inertial mass, so tiny fuel supply can let the rocket travel to a star. Also having the rocket gain momentum with nothing losing an equal amount, is a violation of the conservation of momentum law."

    BTW I've realized that if one could discover how to modulate an isotope's decay rate, not only would you be a "shoe-in" for the Nobel Prize in Physics, you would make even more money by patenting the means. The Voyager isotope powered thermo-electric generator is possibly the best every made, but will be of little if any use after ~60 years.

    If you could modulate its decay rate to just supply the currently needed energy it might be able to server an intermittent power demand for 600 years. I never thought about it before, but bet any available energy not currently needed charges a battery and one modulates the load instead. Many tasks on a satellite could be turned only when battery was approaching full charge.

    I've spent many an hour trying to think how a well defined half life is possible, many years ago. I have not searched to find latest idea, but think it is fact that some rare dynamic structures with in the nucleus are unstable. - they happen at random. I know that alpha particle associations do often form with in the nucleus - you see this both in "alpha emitters" and in the "magic numbers" for nuclear stability etc. Also the long range electric repulsion and short range nuclear attraction is why the neutron to proton ratio for stable atoms increases with atomic number. - Perhaps occasionally in some sub section of a nucleus that ratio drops too low and electric forces self amplify as it expands into isotopic decay. All these could be just very low probability sub-groupings as protons & neutrons dynamically re-arrange, - now I think I will search a little to see how much more has been learned and if any of my decades old ides is still in the running.
     
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  23. paddoboy Valued Senior Member

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    No one will or has ever claimed someone will go faster than light, per se.
    But it is not against the laws of physics or GR to achieve a perception of FTL travel, via space warp etc.
     

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