The big problem is energy. If we had almost infinite energy we could accelerate to a significant fraction of the speed of light at a leasurely 9.81 m/s² in about a year. The travel at almost lightspeed would feel instantaneous for us. Add another year to decelerate at the same rate. We could reach any point in the visible universe in 2 years.
Our destination would just be drastically different from what we observed, depending on how far away it was.
Oh, and apart from the tiny energy problem cosmic radiation will probably destroy our spaceship. I bet at relativistic speeds you’d even get enough neutrino collisions to make them a problem.
We could reach any point in the visible universe in 2 years.
Jesse, what the fuck are you talking about?
The observable universe is a spherical region of the universe consisting of all matter that can be observed from Earth; The radius of this region is about 14.26 gigaparsecs (46.5 billion light-years or 4.40×1026 m).
Traveling at the speed of light from earth to the edge of the visible Universe, would take around 23 billion years.
Technically the visible universe extends only about 13 billion light years from us. We can just calculate where that stuff is now because of expansion. And as I wrote the area we’re aiming for will surely change drastically the further away it is.
These journeys wouldn’t take billions of years for someone traveling near light speed because for them the lengths would shrink down so much that they’d be negligible. Of course once they had slowed down those billions of years will have gone by for everything outside the space ship. So it’s not good for missions where you want to return home to your family afterwards.
The big problem is energy. If we had almost infinite energy we could accelerate to a significant fraction of the speed of light at a leasurely 9.81 m/s² in about a year. The travel at almost lightspeed would feel instantaneous for us. Add another year to decelerate at the same rate. We could reach any point in the visible universe in 2 years.
Our destination would just be drastically different from what we observed, depending on how far away it was.
Oh, and apart from the tiny energy problem cosmic radiation will probably destroy our spaceship. I bet at relativistic speeds you’d even get enough neutrino collisions to make them a problem.
Jesse, what the fuck are you talking about?
The observable universe is a spherical region of the universe consisting of all matter that can be observed from Earth; The radius of this region is about 14.26 gigaparsecs (46.5 billion light-years or 4.40×1026 m).
Traveling at the speed of light from earth to the edge of the visible Universe, would take around 23 billion years.
Technically the visible universe extends only about 13 billion light years from us. We can just calculate where that stuff is now because of expansion. And as I wrote the area we’re aiming for will surely change drastically the further away it is.
These journeys wouldn’t take billions of years for someone traveling near light speed because for them the lengths would shrink down so much that they’d be negligible. Of course once they had slowed down those billions of years will have gone by for everything outside the space ship. So it’s not good for missions where you want to return home to your family afterwards.