Okay just a hot take here, but I don't think this is the biggest barrier to interstellar travel.
this post was submitted on 11 Dec 2023
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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?
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Uh, no shit? That's how light works once you're able to travel at relativistic speeds - communication over interstellar distances using light 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.
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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!
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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
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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.
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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.
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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
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No shit.
Have they never watched Star Trek, subspace relays people.
What exactly is subspace anyways?
It’s a different part of the universe, separate from normal space where things like baryonic matter exists. In subspace certain of our universe’s fundamental rules as seen in normal space don’t apply or constants are different.
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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!"
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Duh.
how could that be surprising??
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imo by the time we have lightspeed ships we may have faster ways to send info, imagine back 2000 years ago and we tell people we can communicate faster than the speed of sound
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Subspace interference.
Tachyons.
heh, just noticed your username. Excellent 👌
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There was an early 2000s anime movie that explored this idea. It was called Voices of a Distant Star.
Honestly this seems like a future me problem.
trash site
This is why Jesus invented ‘two cans and a piece of string’.
Dammit, I’m not even a trained physicist but I still have to do all the thinking around here.
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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.
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