Subspace is the answer of course!
Okay just a hot take here, but I don’t think this is the biggest barrier to interstellar travel.
The worst thing about interstellar travel: no internet
Two possible solutions:
- No interstellar travel
- Selfhost everything
I once tried to set up a LAN game of Halo, and let me tell you I’m resigned to staying on earth.
Earth is a massive obstacle to network communication. Move to an o’neill cylinder and never have latency again
Are you suggesting I lead humanity into a golden interstellar post-scarcity future so that I can play halo without lag?
It is your solemn duty!
The goal of interstellar travel must be to reduce the ping to 0
The best way to play Halo without lag is to make contact with the Covenant. So yeah, to space!
Maybe by that point we’ll have actual AI.
Buddy can you imagine all the new alien pron in the new system though?
I mean space is pretty empty yea but I feel like it would be a pain in the ass to prevent a ship travelling at light speed from bumping into small to mid sized space debris. On the other hand, I am imagining with this much drive on energy techs we will be at some point able to come up with a solution to the energy requirement to power such a vessel.
Also, I don’t think this is anything particularly new. It’s pretty logical of you think about it for a few minutes.
Uh, no shit? That’s how light works once you’re able to travel at relativistic speeds - communication over interstellar distances is going to take ages.
Even within our own solar system interplanetary travel will have significant communication time delays.
Edit: also, we already know that matter and light can’t exceed c, but I wouldn’t be surprised if we discover that other forces (gravitation, or another that we haven’t understood yet) can transmit information at speeds >c. I wouldn’t be surprised if we turned to quantum entanglement for instantaneous communication over extreme distances either.
Gravity travels at c. The Alcubierre drive tried to use bubbles in spacetime to “bend the rules” in order to result in apparent >c velocities but recent simulations indicate the bubble becomes unstable when attempting to exceed c.
Then we need the Tim (Allen) Taylor solution.
Moar Power! Uhh uhh uhh uhh uhh
My first thought was ‘no shit’ as well. There’s a horrible heartbreaking anime about that… Voices of a Distant Star.
other forces … can transmit information at speeds >c
I sadly disagree. Even if we figure out a way to instantaneously transport ourselves across the universe, there will be some shitty clause in fine-print that says we can’t go back, or it took 0 time for us but 1 billion years for everything else.
Check out this video by Anton Petrov:
https://odysee.com/@whatdamath:8/woah!-someone-just-sent-an-impossible:4
or it took 0 time for us but 1 billion years for everything else.
That’s just time travel with extra steps!
It literally is time travel.
We are all currently time-traveling at a ratio of (edit: roughly) 1:1
They’re probably referring to quantum entanglement, which affects the entangled particles instantly.
Yeah but you can’t interfere with quantum entangled particles, if you do you break the entanglement. So it isn’t usable as a method of communication.
It isn’t usable as a method of communication by any means we’re aware of.
Something I’ve not been asked to get through my head about QE: If observing the entangled particle destroys the entanglement, doesn’t that mean we’d need “containers” of entangled particles to send a bunch of information?
You can’t send information with entangled particles. You just learn the state of the other particle by inference when you observe the first particle.
Quantum entanglement is like ripping a photo in half, putting both halves in seperate envelopes and carrying them to opposite ends of the world.
As soon as you open your envelope, you instantly know which half of the photo is on the other side of the planet - Faster Than Light Information Transfer!For a variety of reasons, no information is actually transferred. Quantum entanglement can not be used to get around the limits imposed by relativity.
That’s what I was trying to illustrate.
Illustrate?? I thought you were talking about photographs
This is a great analogy. Consider it
stolenpirated.So it’s not like: when I affect the hue (some attribute) of my half, the other half will change too? That has always been my understanding of it
No, measuring one particle collapses the entanglement and they no longer affect each other. It is a one time thing. You can’t modify them after they have been observed.
So at best it can be used for unpredictable coordination between vastly-spaced armies.
C is more than just the speed of light. It is the speed of Causality. No information can travel faster than C in a vacuum. Gravitational waves already reach us faster than the light from events that cause them (i.e. neutron star collisions) Because small particles slow down the light over long distances, as they absorb and then re-emit the photons.
The problem with information traveling ftl is, that you’re very quickly running into paradoxes. So just by logic wanting to keep intact, I feel like ftl communication will be impossible
Logically it makes sense, but the real world is years and often we don’t use the right logical systems. It makes logical sense to most people that a heavy object falls faster then a light object ,but we know that is false (and a also a non obvious logical system that also shows it is false)
If you actually calculate the maximum speed at which information can travel before causing paradoxes, in some situations it could safely exceed c.
For two observers who are not in motion relative to each other, information could be transmitted instantly, regardless of the distance, without causing a paradox.
The faster the observers are traveling relatively to each other, the slower information would have to travel to avoid causing paradoxes.
More interestingly, this maximum paradox-free speed correlates with the time and space dilation caused by the observers’ motion.
From your own reference frame, another person is moving at a speed of v*c. The maximum speed at which you could send a message to that observer, without causing a paradox, looks something like c/sqrt(v) (very simplified).
By the time we invent any sort of lightspeed travel, we’ll have long conquered quantum entanglement. If you have a signal transferred over a properly quantum entangled technology, the signal would transfer instantaneously.
Another option would be tiny temporary Einstein Rosen bridges. Sure the energy requirements would be hideous, but if we’ve figured out how to exceed C, I don’t think we really care about energy costs anymore.
You cannot transmit information through entangled particles, so probably not.
Oh, you already know about it. No one else should bother reading then.
It might become like the days of sail. The fastest mode of communication might actually be the speed of ships. In order to get a message between earth and alpha centauri you might have to actually build messenger ships.
You might have to build small automated FTL capable ships with massive data storage capacity and then download all of the data you need to send and then set the ship off on its way.
Never underestimate the bandwidth of a spaceship full of tapes hurtling through the cosmos.
Indeed, it’s the only thing that ever has
Star Citizen has a ship like that. A cabin strapped onto the largest engine that wouldn’t kill you, with data storage added almost like an afterthought.
Well, star citizen has a ship like that - it doesnt have any gameplay loops that make use of that though.
The futuristic version of never underestimate the bandwidth of a station wagon full of tapes hurtling down the highway.
Data storage ships is a thing in Beacon 23.
I was hoping the days of sail would be some kind of cool Sci-Fi movie or series.
Why is this even an article? It’s obvious.
Somebody just watched the Expanse for the first time and thinks it’s a neat new thing to explain to the Earthers
That journalist is a real wellwalla
Is it weird that I’ve only ever read the books? I didn’t even know there was a show until recently. Is it any good?
It’s fairly good. Some things are a bit abridged for the sake of action and visuals. Like travel that takes weeks is sometimes happening within hours or days.
However the dialogue, writing and characters are pretty good. It did lack a bit in season 6 (the last one) but that’s because the material wasn’t there yet in the books and somehow it cuts things short with material from book 6 at best.
Thanks, I might check it out!
Also Passengers, starring Chris Pratt, has a mention of this too.
No shit.
Have they never watched Star Trek, subspace relays people.
What exactly is subspace anyways?
Subspace is what the warp bubble moves through
Ok, then it’s fictional. The theoretical warp drive that is consistent with Einstein’s field equations moves through normal space but just warps it in a way that it effectively moves faster than light (while locally obeying the light speed limit).
Though that still requires something with negative mass or gravity (I was very disappointed when they confirmed antimatter has normal gravity, I was hoping the theory was wrong on that).
There’s still dark energy and dark matter that are kinda odd
There is the idea that everything is shrinking instead of space expanding, which resolves the dark energy question.
Space is like a rainbow, subspace is equal to ultraviolet and hyperspace is infrared. At least inmy head cannon.
Who would have thought that Doppler could apply to communication equipment, too! Shocking!
Next they are going to tell us that messages might take some time due to c!
Most people have missed the bit about time dilation messing up the clocks used in signalling, which I thought was interesting at first. However, surely the fix is just as simple as including a timing signal with the transmissions?
Yeah we solved this problem in the 50s by including a clock signal in some form with the data. Most modern digital communications use it.
If nothing else, you discovered a way to gloss over the impossible thing in a bad scifi movie. “No it works because we added a timing signal!”
I think the problem is less timing the messages, and more that the messages from earth will just get redshifted more and more as the ship accelerates, which will require an ever larger antenna to pick up. This also has the affect of bandwidth tending towards 0.
That’s what ansible is for, right?
Enders Game reference?
Booo. Orson Scott Card took that term from Ursula K. Le Guin.
I agree, boo to him but I did like that book
It sure is.
The enemy’s gate is down.
There was an early 2000s anime movie that explored this idea. It was called Voices of a Distant Star.
Subspace interference.
Tachyons.
heh, just noticed your username. Excellent 👌
It’s time for a CAKE queue management algorithm with…ahem…interplanetary RTT scheme!
trash site
Honestly this seems like a future me problem.
Jerry Pournelle’s “CoDominium” books work like this. The ships are FTL, but can only use the FTL drive at a certain point to leave a system. There isn’t a way to send messages faster than light, other than a ship. There is mention of “message sloops” which are small ships with high acceleration wich can move from the jump point to the inner system faster than one of the battleships.
Quantum Entanglement
