4 replies to this topic

[dimasok]

For some reason I can't find an answer to this anywhere even though I googled everywhere. Whenever anyone mentioned FTL, the timeframes for actually traveling these speeds are never provided.
For instnace, say we develop those warp-drive technologies (Alcubierre drive or what have you), how fast would we be able to travel, theoretically, from Earth and the Milky Way all the way to the closest to us Andromeda galaxy? Is it measured in years, months, weeks, days, hours, minutes or seconds?

For once I would like to know definitively how FTL is so astonishingly faster than anything else by seeing a comparison between how long it would take using conventional, near-future, far-future or sci-fi scenarios.

[revenant]

If it were possible to reach such speeds, theoretically time would compress to a standstill. You would be unable to affect your environment in this universe as you and your ship would be composed of antimatter.

[dimasok]

But to an outside observer, or more correctly, OBJECTIVELY, how long would the journey take? A second?

[bobdrake12]

The distance to the Andromeda Galaxy is 2.54 million light-years, dimasok.

The speed of light (meaning speed of light in vacuum), is usually denoted by c.

Traveling at 2c, it would take 1.27 million years to reach the Andromeda Galaxy.

There are several galaxies closer to Earth than Andromeda. The Large Magellanic Cloud is 160,000 light-years away while the Canis Major Dwarf Galaxy is 25,000 light-years from Earth.

Edited by bobdrake12, 18 August 2011 - 11:01 AM.

[Toni Roman]

You have put your finger on the key question. How long would a voyage be? One sliding scale answer for the people aboard using an elastic scale. A different answer for the people back in mission control.

The usual answer is that for those aboard, this would be a generation ship and the generation that launched would be the ancestors (great-great-great grandparents) of the great-great-great grandchildren who arrived somewhere. A really discouraging answer. And for those back on Earth, millions of years would have passed and the ship long forgotten. This is the same as saying NO faster than light travel in my opinion. What good is FTL if the trip will take forever?

I also think that even if such a depressingly long odyssey was launched, the ship would be overtaken by a later launching faster model and when the generation ship arrived, its orphans would be greeted by the crew of the later launching newer and faster model.

I suggest a fresh approach --

• Instead of wasting time, money and talent on FTL (unless you are involved in an interstellar project to Alpha Centauri and I know such people), instead focus on hyperluminal physics not superluminal physics. Superluminal physics or FTL is basically struggling to beat up Albert Einstein. A rather challenging effort. Hyperluminal physics by contrast starts by focusing on achieving velocities of one billion times the speed of light and does not waste time debating whether such is possible. This number was not chosen at whim. There are theoretical papers about velocities in this range by physicists working on tachyons.
• Work on Time Dilation Compensation Technology. In its simplest terms, this means that if one twin goes and the other twin stays, then one does not die of old age and that they meet again and their ages are still synchronized. I never said this was easy but it would be well worth the effort to develop such technology.
• Develop related technologies such as hyperluminal propulsion, on-board clocks or shipboard clocks that work on such ships and synching them up with the clock back in mission control, and passenger protection systems.
• I would suggest that any voyage that lasted longer than ten years for either the passengers or the people back on Earth is intolerable. It is irrelevant that we may be talking about life externsionists or immortalists. Humans are humans whether we are short-livers or long-livers. This is the 21st Century and we do not like waiting. Our patience has limits. Ten years is the most that we should ask either crew, passengers or their families and friends back on Earth to suspend their lives. It is wrong to ask more of people.
• If there is one thing that history teaches us, then it is that we will find a faster way. Einstein may or may have said that we cannot go faster than light but Einstein was not God. Tardyons move slower than light. Luxons move at the speed of light. Tachyons move faster than light. This is part of the theory too.