Futurism logo

In 100 million years, will humans be able to travel interstellar?

The answer is frightening

By Many A-SunPublished about a year ago 5 min read
Like
Space

In the 1960s, advanced space technology sent three astronauts to the moon, and mankind realized a long-cherished dream while gaining a deeper understanding and knowledge of the universe

According to NASA scientists, there is a high probability that humans will set foot on Mars by 2050 when the red planet will become the first stop for humans to sail the sea of stars, and the basic introduction of human beings will change from simple planetary creatures to interplanetary creatures.

As of today, there are five probes carrying the duty of "Earth's calling card" to the depths of the universe, of which the farthest Voyager 1 is already 22.73 billion kilometers away from Earth.

If we simply look at the above two paragraphs and the time and mileage, we may think that human technology has been very impressive, conquering the stars and the sea seems to be just around the corner. But is this the reality? Is it so simple to conquer the universe? The answer is very cruel.

The first thing in front of mankind is the desperate distance. We take the closest distance from Earth to Mars, for example, this distance only takes about 3 minutes to cross, but do not forget that the speed of light is the fastest in the universe, if we are familiar with transport, this "point" distance is extremely long.

For example, it takes about 418 years to ride a bicycle, 25 years to travel by high-speed rail and a little less time to travel by airplane, about 6 years and 9 months.

Neighboring planets are so, want to get out of the solar system, and how difficult it will be? Currently, Voyager 1 is traveling at about 18,000th of the speed of light, and it has taken about 43 years to travel 1/450th of a light year. According to calculations, if it still maintains this speed of flight, then it will take at least 30,000 years to leave the gravitational range of the solar system.

And leaving the sun does not mean that everything is safe, because the nearest star system to our solar system is still 4.243 light years away, which is another desperate number. It will take Voyager 1 at least 80 to 100 thousand years to reach Proximal.

Distance is only one of the influencing factors, there is another determining factor that is also impossible to ignore - energy consumption.

As we all know, the kinetic energy equation is the main formula for calculating the kinetic energy of an object, i.e. E=m/2. If we want to reach the Proximal system from the solar system in the limited life of human beings, the speed of the spacecraft must be increased at least a hundred times from the current one.

But according to the kinetic energy equation, the cost of increasing the speed by hundreds of times is to consume millions of times more energy, which is an impossibility in terms of the current level of technology.

Even with some incredible ways to overcome the consumption and energy problems, it is not to say that interstellar travel has been fully realized, because there are many nearly insoluble problems, such as the dust and micro-particles that fill the entire interstellar space.

Galaxies

The low-speed state of these dust and particles are harmless, and can not even feel their presence. But once the ship is moving at ultra-high speed, these dust and particles will immediately turn from gentle sheep into hideous demons, and they will cause unimaginably great damage to the ship's hull.

In addition to the ship's materials, a long-term interstellar voyage for the people in it is the ultimate torture, which requires the ship must have a very good life support system, and absolute sealing, but also take into account the long time weightlessness of human pathology, as well as a long time in the cosmic radiation brought about by genetic changes and so on.

Although from all aspects, interstellar travel is a distant dream, this does not discourage scientists, because we still have unmanned probes.

When it comes to unmanned probes most people probably only know Voyager, but in addition to them, there are many unmanned exploration programs, such as the Broken Regent program, the Icarus program, and so on.

Scientists hope to develop nanoprobes with very small mass and volume, and then send such probes into the universe at sunlight speeds to explore the endless stars instead of humans.

Not only for nanoprobes but also real manned exploration scientists have done a lot of research, such as embryo freezing and hibernation often seen in science fiction movies, etc.

It is worth mentioning that these plans are to study how to make the human weak body can interstellar travel, so from a certain point of view the body is also an obstacle to human conquest of the universe, perhaps the future combination of machinery and people is the mainstream development trend.

The plan is only the beginning of interstellar travel, the real interstellar travel that becomes a reality is the propulsion power itself. From the point of view of thrust alone, the chemical thrust is now commonly used although the thrust is very adequate, its specific impulse is very low.

The ion engine, which is usually used to adjust the attitude of the spacecraft, has less thrust, but its jet speed is several times that of chemical propulsion.

The nuclear-powered engines that have received much attention have very high thrust indeed, theoretically capable of reaching 15% of the speed of light, but to reach this speed requires an extremely long acceleration time, said to be greater than 50 years. And the most powerful propulsion technology known to mankind is antimatter propulsion, which is capable of reaching a theoretical speed of 90% of the speed of light.

After reading about the propulsion technology and interstellar travel preparation, I believe that many people will have a problem in their minds: even if humans master the technology of ultra-high-speed movement, in terms of human life expectancy, may not arrive at the destination of old age, what is the significance of such interstellar travel?

This is the real problem of interstellar travel, although there is a time dilation effect in high-speed movement, this does not increase the life of humans on the ship, a minute or a minute, once the destination is too far away, life is still the key to limit the voyage distance.

So under the constraints of various objective conditions, some scientists are not optimistic about human development, even if the development of 100 million years, distance is still a fatal factor that humans can not overcome, and this may also be the real reason why humans have not found alien civilizations - technology can not overcome the distance.

futureliteraturefact or fiction
Like

About the Creator

Many A-Sun

Where your interests lie, that's where your abilities lie.

Reader insights

Be the first to share your insights about this piece.

How does it work?

Add your insights

Comments

There are no comments for this story

Be the first to respond and start the conversation.

Sign in to comment

    Find us on social media

    Miscellaneous links

    • Explore
    • Contact
    • Privacy Policy
    • Terms of Use
    • Support

    © 2024 Creatd, Inc. All Rights Reserved.