Why doesn't the bible mention dinosaurs?

[Skashion]

Weeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeell that kind of depends really.

It's all about your frame of reference. Lets say, you travel to a nearby planet that's 100 light years away at a speed extremely close to 'c'. That's 200 light years round trip.

Well according to special relativity, you would go off. To everyone on Earth you will be gone for 200(ish) years. Everybody you know would die and the buildings will have crumbled away.

Then you come back from your fantastic voyage and you find to your dismay everybody is dead. You however, have been to a place 100 light years away, come back, and you've aged... but not by a lot. Maybe a few days.

It's anti intuitive but technically travelling at 'c' or at least very very close allows us in our own frame of reference to reach great distances. Everybody around us though would age as normal. So the difference between 0.9c and c is actually hugely significant.

(Please note I'm not trying to pull you up and act all arsey, just giving people who are interested a bit of extra information.

I'm afraid this post was wasted on me but hopefully it will be useful to others. :)

However, the context was colonisation and colonisation cares not for your individual frame of reference. If you're not colonising your children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren are in your stead.<br /><br />-- Tue Nov 30, 2010 8:50 pm --<br /><br />

Would't he be 200 years older? His time slows down relative to us, but for him 2 years is 2 years, so if it takes 200 years for light to go there and come back, he would age 200 years.

Edit: I may be a bit confused on relativistic effects, haven't done any of this stuff in about 5 years.

SkyBlueFlux is right.

 

[SkyBlueFlux]

Weeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeell that kind of depends really.

It's all about your frame of reference. Lets say, you travel to a nearby planet that's 100 light years away at a speed extremely close to 'c'. That's 200 light years round trip.

Well according to special relativity, you would go off. To everyone on Earth you will be gone for 200(ish) years. Everybody you know would die and the buildings will have crumbled away.

Then you come back from your fantastic voyage and you find to your dismay everybody is dead. You however, have been to a place 100 light years away, come back, and you've aged... but not by a lot. Maybe a few days.

It's anti intuitive but technically travelling at 'c' or at least very very close allows us in our own frame of reference to reach great distances. Everybody around us though would age as normal. So the difference between 0.9c and c is actually hugely significant.

(Please note I'm not trying to pull you up and act all arsey, just giving people who are interested a bit of extra information.

I'm afraid this post was wasted on me but hopefully it will be useful to others. :)

However, the context was colonisation and colonisation cares not for your individual frame of reference. If you're not colonising your children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren are in your stead.

Well, it's not impossible to believe that a colony of people could go on a spaceship travelling at a speed close to the speed of light. Although they would leave behind mankind as they know it, they could reach a planet which is a very long distance away, if they were travelling fast enough.

It's not a kind of colonisation I think would ever happen though, as it is essentially just ejecting bits of the human race into space without there being any obvious benefit other than 'we did it to put humans elsewhere'.

 

[Skashion]

Well, it's not impossible to believe that a colony of people could go on a spaceship travelling at a speed close to the speed of light. Although they would leave behind mankind as they know it, they could reach a planet which is a very long distance away, if they were travelling fast enough.

It's not a kind of colonisation I think would ever happen though, as it is essentially just ejecting bits of the human race into space without there being any obvious benefit other than 'we did it to put humans elsewhere'.

I'm not questioning the possibility of colonisation. I very much think the human race will colonise and will be quite capable of doing so regardless of whether we are technologically advanced enough to significantly take advantage of relativistic effects. To me, the matter is irrelevant. Yes, if you personally want to piss off to the other side of the galaxy, you'll need something capable of high fractions of c in the 0.999c region. That's self-evident. However, if you only want to colonise you can go along with something which has been frequently discussed with regards to the Fermi Paradox, at relatively minor fractions of (<0.2)c, where relativistic effects are negligible.

 

[SkyBlueFlux]

Well, it's not impossible to believe that a colony of people could go on a spaceship travelling at a speed close to the speed of light. Although they would leave behind mankind as they know it, they could reach a planet which is a very long distance away, if they were travelling fast enough.

It's not a kind of colonisation I think would ever happen though, as it is essentially just ejecting bits of the human race into space without there being any obvious benefit other than 'we did it to put humans elsewhere'.

I'm not questioning the possibility of colonisation. I very much think the human race will colonise and will be quite capable of doing so regardless of whether we are technologically advanced enough to significantly take advantage of relativistic effects. To me, the matter is irrelevant. Yes, if you personally want to piss off to the other side of the galaxy, you'll need something capable of high fractions of c in the 0.999c region. That's self-evident. However, if you only want to colonise you can go along with something which has been frequently discussed with regards to the Fermi Paradox, at relatively minor fractions of (<0.2)c, where relativistic effects are negligible.

I see your point. Well, however we colonise (which I also think we will), I think the first step is to attempt terra-forming an inhospitable planet like Mars.

I see this as the first challenge, getting a planet that isn't our own to sustain human life by introducing our own terrestrial technologies (or in the case of Mars we could simply use plants to alter the CO2-oxygen balance).

Jetting off to the other side of the Universe sounds great, but we need to be sure we'll be able to sustain ourselves in other places first.

Interesting, and very in depth, topic though I'm sure you'd agree :)

 

[Damocles]

The impossibility of travelling beyond the speed of light is something that I disagree with. Just to be clear, I have no scientific basis for thinking this, just a faith in humanity and an understanding of how science progresses.

Travelling above c is only impossible because the faster an object travels, the more mass it acquires, therefore the more energy is needed to speed it up. At speeds nearing c, the mass is almost infinite, so we need an impossible amount of energy.

If we could find a way to turn the added mass into energy, we'd be all set. Bosons turn energy into mass, so why not?

This fantasy apart, we could use energy sources in the future that would bend the fabric of spacetime, thus shortening the distance we have to travel. There's also wormhole technology, or even massive sleeper ships to carry humanity off into the stars.

We've been in space for around 60 years and now have geosynchronous satellites, satellites in the furthest reaches of our galaxy, robots on other planets, men stepping on the Moon and soon to come, Mars. We have solar sails, ion engines and other new forms of propulsion. 60 years that took us. Imagine what we can do in 50,000 years.

Do you mean our solar system?

Errr...yes, I did actually. I was in two minds whether to say "furthest reaches of our Solar System", or "travelling into the depths of the galaxy" and seemed to have jumbled the two.

 

[Skashion]

I see your point. Well, however we colonise (which I also think we will), I think the first step is to attempt terra-forming an inhospitable planet like Mars.

I see this as the first challenge, getting a planet that isn't our own to sustain human life by introducing our own terrestrial technologies (or in the case of Mars we could simply use plants to alter the CO2-oxygen balance).

Jetting off to the other side of the Universe sounds great, but we need to be sure we'll be able to sustain ourselves in other places first.

Interesting, and very in depth, topic though I'm sure you'd agree :)

Bit further off-topic but as this started off with the Bible and dinosaur... your mention of terraforming has made me get the owd Red Dwarf (where I first heard of terraforming) DVDs out. I'd imagine we'd have some Red Dwarf fans on a thread like this. Here's hoping.

Absolutely, love topics like this. It's one of the better things about Bluemoon. With the amount of members here you can discuss practically anything.

 

[Damocles]

I'm not questioning the possibility of colonisation. I very much think the human race will colonise and will be quite capable of doing so regardless of whether we are technologically advanced enough to significantly take advantage of relativistic effects. To me, the matter is irrelevant. Yes, if you personally want to piss off to the other side of the galaxy, you'll need something capable of high fractions of c in the 0.999c region. That's self-evident. However, if you only want to colonise you can go along with something which has been frequently discussed with regards to the Fermi Paradox, at relatively minor fractions of (<0.2)c, where relativistic effects are negligible.

I see your point. Well, however we colonise (which I also think we will), I think the first step is to attempt terra-forming an inhospitable planet like Mars.

I see this as the first challenge, getting a planet that isn't our own to sustain human life by introducing our own terrestrial technologies (or in the case of Mars we could simply use plants to alter the CO2-oxygen balance).

Jetting off to the other side of the Universe sounds great, but we need to be sure we'll be able to sustain ourselves in other places first.

Interesting, and very in depth, topic though I'm sure you'd agree :)

If we took all of the nuclear weapons on Earth and exploded them on Mars, the resulting nuclear winter would produce a greenhouse effect, thickening the Martian atmosphere, warming the surface and melting the polar ice caps to create an ecosystem. If we add in a bit of our own knowledge, we could probably terraform Mars within 100 years if we actually tried.

Terraforming is one of those subjects that I enjoy reading about.

EDIT: I'm down with the Boyz from the Dwarf.

 

[JoeMercer'sWay]

I see your point. Well, however we colonise (which I also think we will), I think the first step is to attempt terra-forming an inhospitable planet like Mars.

I see this as the first challenge, getting a planet that isn't our own to sustain human life by introducing our own terrestrial technologies (or in the case of Mars we could simply use plants to alter the CO2-oxygen balance).

Jetting off to the other side of the Universe sounds great, but we need to be sure we'll be able to sustain ourselves in other places first.

Interesting, and very in depth, topic though I'm sure you'd agree :)

If we took all of the nuclear weapons on Earth and exploded them on Mars, the resulting nuclear winter would produce a greenhouse effect, thickening the Martian atmosphere, warming the surface and melting the polar ice caps to create an ecosystem. If we add in a bit of our own knowledge, we could probably terraform Mars within 100 years if we actually tried.

Terraforming is one of those subjects that I enjoy reading about.

i'm enjoying the fact I understand a lot of what you're saying...

...makes me feel intelligent ;).

 

[SkyBlueFlux]

I see your point. Well, however we colonise (which I also think we will), I think the first step is to attempt terra-forming an inhospitable planet like Mars.

I see this as the first challenge, getting a planet that isn't our own to sustain human life by introducing our own terrestrial technologies (or in the case of Mars we could simply use plants to alter the CO2-oxygen balance).

Jetting off to the other side of the Universe sounds great, but we need to be sure we'll be able to sustain ourselves in other places first.

Interesting, and very in depth, topic though I'm sure you'd agree :)

If we took all of the nuclear weapons on Earth and exploded them on Mars, the resulting nuclear winter would produce a greenhouse effect, thickening the Martian atmosphere, warming the surface and melting the polar ice caps to create an ecosystem. If we add in a bit of our own knowledge, we could probably terraform Mars within 100 years if we actually tried.

Terraforming is one of those subjects that I enjoy reading about.

Although that would undoubtedly speed things up would it not render the surface inhospitable for a long time because of high radiation levels?

You're probably much better read on this then I am but it's a subject I'm also very interested in, in a casual sense at least.

 

[Skashion]

EDIT: I'm down with the Boyz from the Dwarf.

Good stuff.