re: NASA: Humans will prove we are not alone in the universe within 20 years.

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Please tell me what law of physics that prohibits interstellar travel.


I bet you haven't even heard of the Alcubierre drive either.....

Hugely impractical considering our currently ability, yes.


Physically impossible?

Nope.

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uh, the alcubierre drive requires something with negative mass. not antimatter. negative mass. which isn't even known to exist. the dude who proposed it suggested that the cassini effect could provide the negative energy requirement in lieu of the negative mass, but it's still conjecture. the math and physics to bear this out have not been developed yet.

and that's without even touching on the fact that travelling faster than light violates causality.

so yes, there are good chances that building an alcubierre drive is physically impossible. the physics problems surrounding it haven't been resolved yet, so i wouldn't go around claiming that it's physically possible.

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he numbers really are crazy if you try to really grasp the scope of the known universe. 

after that, I like to spend some time pondering what is beyond the known universe. I struggle considering a truly infinite area without any physical boundaries. what is on the edge of the universe? what is that border made of? how think is it? what is on the other side of it. There's almost a primal fear of something being truly boundless. 

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Discussions like this really make you wonder "what the frick am I doing?" I am so insignificant and have such a short time on this planet, why am I spending it in a cubicle 40 hours a week? Why do I give a shite what some person thinks about me? Why do I get mad over such trivial things?

Not that these particular things relate to me, but for people as a whole.

Oh my bad. I meant to say: unless a conjecture about a poorly understood phenomenon somehow pans out, or a particle with negative mass is discovered, it is physically impossible. and not to mention violates causality.

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I actually don't think humans are capable of comprehending something so vast. I mean 100 billion stars in our galaxy alone?

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We aren't. How far does this go? What's on the other side of where it stops?

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Is there a religion that says there is no life outside of earth?

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There is a religion that says there is another world out there with life forms similar to our own. It already has a name, heaven.

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i'm not saying that heaven doesn't exist, but is it necessary to your beliefs that it exists somewhere in this universe? i always imagined that (if i weren't mostly agnostic) it would exist sort of in another reality. and i'm not opposed to religion, but i never thought people believed heaven was a place that was physically in the same realm as the earth. if you're trolling, good job. if not, i am honestly curious.

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I think the general consensus is that it's in another realm.

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Here's a mind blowing fact: if you travel at light speed, end to end, across the milky way, it would take 100,000 years.

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And the worlds out there may not even exist anymore.

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Theory is you can't travel faster than light

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You can't, but we'll get around this by warping space-time around us. Basically the spaceship will stay in the same place but move time and space around itself.

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You can't, but we'll get around this by warping space-time around us. Basically the spaceship will stay in the same place but move time and space around itself.

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i have to admit, the alcubierre drive is a pretty cool idea whether it's possible or not. it really crushes me to think that FTL travel is not possible, but as you mentioned there's some long shot physics that might bear it out, but i wouldn't have my hopes up. even if it is possible i don't think they'd even come close to it in our lifetimes.

it's a pretty lonely universe without FTL travel though.