Intergalactic travel – science or fiction?

I doubt any of you have failed to read a book or watch a movie that has dabbled with the fictional account of travel to other worlds. Specifically, somewhere within our galaxy; perchance a planet somewhat like ours, orbiting some distant star. But what if you wanted to know if there was even the remotest sliver of possibility in these accounts? I have recently tried to convince myself of the possibility, only to find that the hurdles required to accomplish such a feat in anything but fictional accounts are astronomical indeed.

Just to put this in perspective. Lets take the nearest star outside of our sun as our galactic destination. That would be Alpha Centauri. A favorite of sci-fi authors precisely because of its nearness. How near is it? Well, if you had a nicely paved road, and obeyed typical freeway speed limits, it would take you just under a billion years to get there. Ok, we know we all speed a little. Half a billion. I still think you will need to stop here and there to stretch your legs along the road. Silly me – who drives a car to a star? Let’s instead take a fancy space shuttle. At nearly 18,000 mph, we can reduce our travel time to about a million years! I think we might get hungry along the way. Too bad there are no small towns or gas stations where we could stop and refill.

So if we are not going to take the shuttle, what could we take? We could try other options, like light sails, ionic or nuclear propulsion systems. But, we will instead cut to the chase. Let’s assume you have the most advanced propulsion system that can theoretically exist. An antimatter drive! Yup, antimatter is real. Not much of it yet, but it can be made, even if it is but one atom at a time. Let’s further assume you want to get there and return to tell of your tale to someone you know. Forty years sounds about right. Twenty years out, twenty back. That, in case you were doing the math, is 1/5th of the speed of light. On average! How much antimatter would it take to do this? Depends greatly on how big a ship you intend on taking for a spin. But roughly speaking, maybe a ton of antimatter would do it. So if someone handed me a ton of antimatter, could it be done? Not today. Remember, I still have to control the antimatter-matter annihilations that create my propulsive energy. And trust me, to get me there and back in the required time, we have to burn it hot. Real hot. Too hot for any known element to withstand. And then there is the unpleasantness of radiation, and the Kuiper belt, and the Oort cloud to get past; and all this just within our own puny solar system. Not to mention having to eat, drink, breathe and keep warm for all those years.

I guess what I am saying is that you should not hold your breath for any imminent human travels beyond our backyard. A shame. I so enjoyed holding on to the illusion of possibility!

Ascent (continued)

We interrupt the regularly scheduled post to bring you the next installment of my fictional account! (click here if you need to find the first installment!)


The opportunity to work in the most technologically advanced facility on the planet warranted taking some risks.

“Thirty seconds to magnetic braking” chimed the voice, and was surprised that he had not paid the least attention to the multitude of other altitude reminders – information that reduced this miracle to an accounting of distance. He braced himself for the expected rough stop, only to find that when the brakes engaged, they felt fluid and natural. He wished his New York apartment elevators were as smooth. When the last settling motions finally came to a stop, he almost laughed at the ding – so reminiscent was it of any other elevator.
But there was where the similarity stopped. It had taken over a decade to manufacture the 260,000 tons of carbon composite nano-tubes that comprised the cables which hoisted people and goods up and down the space elevator’s length. Not to mention the decades of research required to overcome the issues, known and unknown. Radiation, lightning strikes, jet stream, meteorites, safety, cost, and ownership were but the most often cited issues that had kept this modern wonder from being built. There had been skeptics even after it was built, and probably still were. Though 11 years without a major mishap had quelled most of their predictions of doom.
Alan knew that the name “Pinnacle One” was intended to connote height, but still thought it more appropriately denoted one of man’s ultimate achievements. Almost as impressive as the technological prowess required to pull off its construction and maintenance, was the political cooperation that had been required. Building Pinnacle would have bankrupted a dozen average countries. Combined. People of some prominence had also pointed out the Panama Canal tragedy of ’44 as a warning and lesson. So when it came time to establish the necessary multi-national funding, all contributors were welcomed, the prevalent wisdom being that the likelihood of sabotage by a disgruntled nation was inversely proportional to its investment and return. It had taken years of patient negotiation to achieve the necessary buy-in. Even so there has been a couple of holdouts. Nations and peoples that had been effectively waging undeclared wars for hundreds if not thousands of years would never be sufficiently reconciled to sign an agreement, much less sit at the same table. Provisional use agreements were set up in order to keep even these dissenters as involved as they could be. Even with all this, Alan still held on to some deep misgivings. Would some misguided zealot think himself the agent of a God intent of sundering this edifice - as was the tower of Babel over 5000 years ago? He had not occupied himself with these concerns much before, but couldn't stop the panicky thoughts each time he heard, or worse, felt, the unfamiliar creaks and groans from the elevator.
His unpleasant thoughts were interrupted as he heard the hiss of air and his ears pop with the equalization of pressure needed before the doors would open and admit him to Pinnacle City. As the door opened unceremoniously, his fears melted away, a sense of awe overpowering him.

Global Warming, Evolution and The fate of the Universe...

Ok - so I just used a title that may have more buzz and controversy associated with it than any other I am likely to use again.

The genesis for this post came from the latest article I read about Global Warming. Or rather, the 260 comments left on the ABC news article. I didn't read them all. After a while they all tended to one of a number of equivalent slants. From "Global Warming is the greatest hoax to be perpetrated" to "We are all about to die". There is much fertile middle ground where the real answer is most likely to exist.

However I digress. One of the assumptions (or at least simplifications) used by many for this and many other arguments, is that this planet is a closed system. In physics, a closed system must obey certain laws. Conservation of energy (1st law of thermodynamics) and the increase in entropy or randomness (2nd law of thermodynamics) to name a couple.
But we can be thankful that this is not the case.

Sunshine abounds, energizing and allowing life to thrive on this planet. Without sunshine, the Earth's albeto would have left our plant cold and lifeless long ago.
Solar and galactic radiation bombard our planet every moment - providing some of the necessary elements for weather and change. We may slather ourselves with sunscreens and lotions to avoid the abuse of solar radiation - but without it, aeons ago our ancestral lines might have never progressed to leave the oceans.

While there are few things that can compete with the fate of the human race, some physicists have pondered the question on a more cosmic scale. They believe that the universe is cooling down (doesn't that sound like a good balancer to global warming?). That is one more way of saying entropy is increasing, and the available "useful" energy that can do work and support life is diminishing. Ok, the process is purportedly going to take billions of years to happen. You and I, and likely humanity as a whole will never have to address this impending universal Armageddon. So why bring this up? Because humanity consistently sizes their universe to the size of their imagination. You can guess which one wins. I have read enough physics (and fiction I admit) to be of the opinion that even our universe is unlikely to fall in the "closed system" category. I can't imagine what lies outside this universe. It could be that we live in what some have called a "foam" of universes. Or there may be nearly infinite universes, each existing as a finite probability. No matter what though, scientists can only base their hypothesis and theories on what is observable today. But if any of these assumptions are wrong... then some of the more basic tenets of science could be but approximations to a greater truth. And if there are more universes that can interact with this one - then maybe the end science foresees for this universe will not come to pass.

We can only hope that our small world will be saved from Global Warming by similar short sighted mistakes and assumptions the majority of scientists and climatologists espouse!

Speed of Light - Revisited

Ok, so you think I am just going to write fiction on this blog?
Interestingly, the following might sound more like fiction than what really is. You tell me...

Everyone knows, or at least I hope, that the speed of light in a vacuum is constant. We give its speed a special name: "c". Yes, the same c from Einstein's famous equation, E=mc^2.

Side note: For those like myself who have impaired html abilities, the "^" denotes squared.

To remove any math, let me draw a simple analogy. Imagine a compass, with just the North South line, and perpendicular East West line. Traveling North represents you moving through time. West is you moving through space. Normally, we think that moving through time (North) is a constant. Watches tick regularly, etc. But when you move through space (West) relative to an observer, it turns out that you actually slow down your progress through time. The effect is small for any speed you and I can easily achieve, but if you could travel the actual speed of light, time would literally stop! Per the analogy - you have changed your compass heading.
But here is the tricky part - you have NOT modified your overall speed. The combined speed in space-time is still the speed of light! Just like the compass needle, your speed did not get longer or shorter, it just turned a little off the its original Northerly heading.

So far, if you don't start asking some questions, this just seems like one more useless thought experiment. So...

If we are fairly stationary in space, are we saying that we are still moving at the speed of light? The curious answer is YES. We move though the time dimension at the speed of light! When we get into the Starship enterprise and start moving at sci-fi speeds approaching that of light, we are just borrowing from our speed in time (time slows down) and replacing it with speed through space. So don't let anyone tell you that you can't move at the speed of light. You are REQUIRED to travel at the speed of light at all times. Any actual speed we gather in the spatial dimensions is achieved at the expense of borrowing from our progess through time!

Ok, then what about light itself? Didn't we just say that the speed of light is a constant "c"? And isn't this speed measured exclusively in the spatial dimension? Indeed. Light's heading per our analogy is Westward only. No motion at all in the Northerly direction. But... North, that is the passage of time isn't it? What does that mean for the poor photon, which is really all light is? It means that all light lives in a timeless world. Time can never progress for a photon. Unlike us, who can choose by some investment of energy to participate in both spatial and temporal dimensions, photons are captives of a single time point.

As if THAT isn't stranger than fiction...

PS - anyone worth their physics salt will point out all the errors I made here. Chill... I know where I took corners to tell an unencumbered story! :-)

And Now for the Horse

Having reviewed the previous post, it occurs to me that without additional writings, some readers just might not connect with the what I wrote. So instead of pushing on with the story immediately, I will digress a little and give my reader some reference point.

The elevator in question has been dubbed by pundits and proponents alike as a "space elevator". Should you not have the time or inclination to read up, it is, in short, a strong cable tethered to some anchor far out in space, balanced by its own weight and the outward force created by whatever it is that anchors the other end. Such an elevator would revolutionize space travel, affording cheaper and safer transportation than current technology could ever provide.
There are many technical challenges to this space elevator. The good news is that the most daunting - the lack of a sufficiently strong material - has been overcome. Even so, it is a lofty concept, and one which I sincerely hope will not remain exclusively in the realm of science fiction.

Short story intro

Some time ago, I began to write a fictional story. As often happens, I was overly zealous in my aspirations, and before long the enormity of the task daunted me. Predictably, I gave up the effort long before it had a chance to take root.
The ideas, howver, still bounce around in my head from time to time. So without any further delay, I dust off my prior efforts in the hope of breathing new life (and more humble beginnnings) to my amateur writing. Here is one version of what I wrote.

Ascent

The sound coming from his low pressure breather reminded him of Darth Vader, from the classic Star Wars movies. Somehow that was not a comforting analogy – especially as he was being propelled to the dark side at just under the acoustic barrier. Insanity! He remembered all the times he had wished to be here. Now all he could think about was the complicated magnetic braking system that would be the only thing keeping him from becoming Earth’s newest satellite. He had not been directly involved in the design or testing of Earth Pinnacle One’s elevators. Now he wished he had been. Then again, his co-workers had not called him a control freak for nothing. He trusted few people to do a job as well as he could.
“Five thousand meters” chimed the talking altimeter. He could have sworn it spoke in a faint British accent. Not surprising, as this has been a North American / British collaboration. In less than five minutes he would be able to see a transoceanic flight dead on. That is, if any flights would have been allowed within 300 kilometers. Sophisticated radar and visual detectors monitored this airspace. A necessity with the myriad global terrorist organizations looking to make political statements. The thought gave him chills. No. Coincidence and nothing more. At this altitude, even with the heated environment in the elevator, the temperature had dropped more than 10 degrees Celsius. He was not surprised. He had been briefed, unnecessarily he grumbled, about what he could expect on his trip to the Near Space Observatory. Amazingly, at just over 400 Kilometers altitude, the entire trip would take less than 45 minutes. The first 10 minutes would go by rather uneventfully, with only a minor drop in temperature and air pressure, along with some minor buffeting by the jet stream. At 20 minutes, he would begin to notice a darker hue to the sky’s usual baby blue. He would not, as many people thought, feel any significant drop in gravity. For that he would need to travel much higher, to over 35000 Kilometers in altitude. Or travel faster so as to orbit the planet many times in a day, much as did the Antares Orbital Station. No, for that he was thankful. Though a view from space intrigued him, nausea did not. There were a few brave souls who were required to travel beyond apogee to tether’s end. These men and women endured not just weightlessness, but gravity reversal – the point where there would be an apparent shift in the direction of gravity. He had heard it was a real trip to grab the railings, turn your body upside down, and land on your feet. Timing was critical. There were anecdotal stories of those who had landed on their heads, so distracted with keeping their stomachs from turning. At 30 minutes, looking out of the small portal, one would finally be given an unobstructed view of space, with countless stars filling the small view into the void. Finally, at 40 minutes, the magnetic brakes would engage. He hoped.
In the six years since Pinnacle One had gone operational, there had only been one fatality, and that happened early on, before additional safety measures had been introduced. Despite all the assurances given, everyone working here was required to sign a disclaimer. No one refused. The opportunity to work in the most technologically advanced facility on the planet warranted taking some risks.