Give that neutrino a ticket!
186 282.397 miles per second. It's not just good sense. It's the law.
That's "c-" the "cosmological constant-" the speed of light. According to Einstein and classical physics, nothing in the universe can travel faster than that. For one thing, time slows down as you approach light speed- at which it would take literally forever to burn that one last drop of fuel it would take to make you go 186,283 mps.
Well, not really. In nature, the speed of light varies according to conditions. But it remains the universal speed limit. Which is a problem for science fiction writers- or scientists, who would like to make their dreams of interstellar travel come true: the distance between starts is simply too great for travel further than Sol's immediate neighborhood to be practical. Well, that and the fact that, according to Einstein, time passes at different rates for spaceships traveling at relativistic speeds on one hand, and back on Earth on the other; by the time the space travelers got home from a trip of any distance, everyone they knew would have been dead for many. many years.
To view the effects of Einstein's theory of special relativity on a journey to Epsilon Eridani- the home star of Mr. Spock's Vulcan, and in fact one of the most promising stars in our neighborhood when it comes to the search for an Earthlike planet- visit this site. Macromedia Flash is required.
Not to worry. Sci-fi authors have come up with work-arounds, some of which are theoretically possible. Star Trek's "warp drive" is one- an arrangement by which a field could be generated around a ship within which it would always be traveling objectively slower than the speed of light, but going faster- perhaps much faster- subjectively, with reference to the space surrounding the warp "envelope." I read somewhere that some scientists think it might be possible, at the theoretical level; the problem is that it would take all the energy in the known universe to do it once.
More practical would be the stable worm hole, the mechanism of interstellar travel in Babylon 5 and the various Stargate programs. Wormholes- essentially temporary "holes' in the time/space continuum- occur naturally, but they are very delicate and ephemeral. Theoretically a ship or other object going through a wormhole would arrive at some other, very distant place in the universe. If a way could be found to locate or even generate wormholes that wouldn't quickly and unpredictably blink out of existence, and for which the location of the "door" on the other side could be predicted accurately, the problem posed by the vast differences between the stars would be solved. But that achievement- if it's possible at all- will have to wait for the far, far distant future.
Theoretically tachyons can travel faster than the speed of light. Theoretically. But now, it seems that another type of particle-neurinos (electrons without an electrical charge)- have actually done it, throwing Einstein's theories and the last century of so of physics generally up for grabs.
Predictably- and , it should be said, perhaps correctly- some scientists are responding less like scientists than like the dogmaticians they all too often become these days by insisting that if an experiment gives a result which violates orthodoxy, the experiment must be wrong. It's not, after all, as if that guy Einstein might have been right when he said, "The universe is not only stranger than you imagine. It's stranger than you can imagine."
Stay tuned. Maybe our grandchildren may be able to make that trip to "super Earth" H5512b (below) after all. Of course, when they get home, it will still be their great-grandchildren who will meet them.
Hey. One insoluable problem at a time!
Comments