Posted on 01/17/2014 7:17:49 AM PST by 12th_Monkey
Interstellar flight certainly ranks among the most daunting challenges ever postulated by human civilization. The distances to even the closest stars are so stupendous that constructing even a scale model of interstellar distance is impractical. For instance, if on such a model the separation of the Earth and sun is 1 inch (2.5 centimeters), the nearest star to our solar system (Proxima Centauri) would be 4.3 miles (6.9 kilometers) away!
The fastest object ever built by the human species is the Voyager 1 space probe, moving at a speed of 18 miles per second. If it were heading toward Proxima Centauri (which it’s not), Voyager 1 would reach our nearest stellar neighbor in about 80,000 years.
Clearly, if interstellar travel is to be accomplished on human timescales, much greater speeds are required. At 10 percent of the speed of light (a thousand times faster than Voyager 1, but a conceivable speed for likely soon-to-be-realized fusion engines), Proxima Centuri could be reached in approximately 45 years — less than a human lifetime.
However, the necessary energies to achieve substantial fractions of the speed of light, thus cutting the travel time to the stars to less than a human lifetime, are equally mind-boggling.
Every pound of starship moving at 99.9 percent the speed of light will have a kinetic energy more than three times greater than the energy of the largest nuclear weapon ever detonated. Nevertheless, there may be a way of supplying an engine with such prodigious energies.
In his 1955 paper Geons, John Wheeler, one of the pioneers of the theory of black holes, coined the term "Kugelblitz" — which translates literally to "ball lightning." He suggested that if enough pure energy could be focused into a region of space, that energy would form a microscopic black hole,
(Excerpt) Read more at space.com ...
This is very interesting stuff. Your equation for time dilation is, of course, correct.
It seems to me that if you were a photon traveling at the speed of light then time would not elapse at all. Thus you, the photon, would be able to move around the universe “instantly”.
Is that correct?
Live long and Kugelblitz
[ In his 1955 paper Geons, John Wheeler, one of the pioneers of the theory of black holes, coined the term “Kugelblitz” — which translates literally to “ball lightning.” He suggested that if enough pure energy could be focused into a region of space, that energy would form a microscopic black hole, ]
Which is interesting as some have speculated that Ball Lightning is actually a cosmic ray that has impacted at high energies into the atmosphere and that has become a micro black hole that then slowly evaporates... Could explain how they appear to pass through regular matter (the core is very tiny and at that scale solid matter as we perceive it is quite porous)
That is exactly the movie I was thinking of! Yes, it didn't go as planned lol!
I’m sure just as we have mechanics to regulate the flow of gasoline into an internal combustion engine, some form of regulator would be needed to maintain whatever exotic physics needed to maintain this reaction.
Speed limit is 186,282 miles per second and no matter how much you feed this thing you’re only going to get to 99.999999% of light....in “normal” space anyway.
The Current FReepathon Pays For The Current Quarters Expenses?
I love the design of the Next Gen Romulan ships. I remember that episode they brought up in the article.
I’ve not heard that before. Interesting. How does a micro black hole evaporate? I thought once a black hole formed, matter falling into ti would sustain it and perhaps cause it to grow?
Ha! Shall I call it hole of color???
To something moving at speeds near light, the distance they've yet to travel shortens. This is apart from the obvious fact that their motion causes the distance to grow shorter. The spaghettification you can visualize by stretching out the time clock illustration I posted (horizontally). ie, by stretching it out it represents speeds approaching light. Or greater and greater effects of time dilation. In other words, if v could equal c (which in theory it can't) the triangle would flatten out to infinity and it would take an infinite amount of time between tick and tock (as an outside observer sees it).
That is a purely mechanical and unrelated effect you are describing there - and one which the observer falling into the black hole would himself observe - long before he achieved relativistic velocities. Actually, tidal forces (or more accurately: differential gravitational forces) would tend to form whatever object falls into a black hole into a conical shape.
Regards,
The problem is not getting sucked into the black hole, too.
“To something moving at speeds near light, the distance they’ve yet to travel shortens”
in front of the said object traveling near light????
Bookmark.
To an observer watching something falling into a black hole would see it spaghettify...I forgot that. thanks for the correction
Only the matter falling into it would increase its mass - but because it's so small (on the order of the size of a proton at the moment it disappears entirely), it wouldn't interact that much - directly. Ordinary matter would seem like an immense emptiness to a microscopic observer following the micro black hole on its journey.
The zone of disruption surrounding the micro black hole would actually tend to repel things.
Regards,
that would be a bad place to be in.
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