Quote from: Solar on August 30, 2015, 06:08:16 AM
Yeah, and for the same reason one can assume they can drive headlong into pea soup fog at high speed and not hit anything because they're 99.9999% certain nothing is in the way when it was built a year earlier.
That was quite a leap of faith with your "99.9999%" there, especially considering until the Huble launched, we could only speculate on what was in the area.

Now that we have a nice clear picture of the area, granted, only a tad outdated by 2,538,000 light years and still the size of a microscope size view of sand on a beach from miles away millenia old information, lets just assume nothing has changed.
Really? You're basing all that on an unknown, we, as man, have been viewing on a historical time graph, of one, one trillionth of a second of time, snapshot and we can safely assume nothing has changed in the interim 2,538,000 light years later?

Jeez, Z, stick to politics.

I did not say nothing will have changed.  What I said is we know enough about how matter moves through space, how gravitational fields affect matter, the evolution of stars, and a whole lot more about the field of science known as astrophysics to be able to calculate what is where currently, according to what was where and how it was moving according to observations made using fossil light.

Basic physics: objects do not change their motion unless acted upon by a force. The only natural force which can act upon astronomical bodies is gravity. And while we do not know quite exactly what gravity is, we do have a solid understanding of how it interacts with matter. As such, to repeat an earlier statement, while we do not know in fine detail what is where in distant galaxies at this moment, we DO know enough to be able to calculate what is probably where. We also know enough to discount any extremes. There are no densely packed, light-years wide asteroid fields, anywhere, no matter how out of date our observations are.  There never WILL be any densely packed, light-years wide asteroid fields. The laws of physics simply do not work that way.

And, one more time, space is MOSTLY empty.  So empty that you could actually jump completely blind over a million light years and have a 99.9999999999+% chance of emerging safely into empty space. In fact, for the distance of ONE million light years, you are almost 100% guaranteed to come out in empty, intergalactic space. That's just from basic probability. IF you were to put just enough aim in your jump to arrive "somewhere in the Andromeda galaxy," you are only 99.9999% sure of arriving in empty space, because intra-galactic space is cluttered compared to intergalactic space. And I am confident that any FTL system we derive will be at least accurate enough to do a little more than jump "somewhere in the Andromeda galaxy." So add at least two orders of magnitude to the probability of arriving safely.

It's still safer than sitting in your living room, waiting to be hit on the head by a meteor.

Quote from: zewazir on August 30, 2015, 11:28:45 AM
I did not say nothing will have changed.  What I said is we know enough about how matter moves through space, how gravitational fields affect matter, the evolution of stars, and a whole lot more about the field of science known as astrophysics to be able to calculate what is where currently, according to what was where and how it was moving according to observations made using fossil light.

Basic physics: objects do not change their motion unless acted upon by a force. The only natural force which can act upon astronomical bodies is gravity. And while we do not know quite exactly what gravity is, we do have a solid understanding of how it interacts with matter. As such, to repeat an earlier statement, while we do not know in fine detail what is where in distant galaxies at this moment, we DO know enough to be able to calculate what is probably where. We also know enough to discount any extremes. There are no densely packed, light-years wide asteroid fields, anywhere, no matter how out of date our observations are.  There never WILL be any densely packed, light-years wide asteroid fields. The laws of physics simply do not work that way.

And, one more time, space is MOSTLY empty.  So empty that you could actually jump completely blind over a million light years and have a 99.9999999999+% chance of emerging safely into empty space. In fact, for the distance of ONE million light years, you are almost 100% guaranteed to come out in empty, intergalactic space. That's just from basic probability. IF you were to put just enough aim in your jump to arrive "somewhere in the Andromeda galaxy," you are only 99.9999% sure of arriving in empty space, because intra-galactic space is cluttered compared to intergalactic space. And I am confident that any FTL system we derive will be at least accurate enough to do a little more than jump "somewhere in the Andromeda galaxy." So add at least two orders of magnitude to the probability of arriving safely.

It's still safer than sitting in your living room, waiting to be hit on the head by a meteor.

No we don't. What we know is the equivalent of an homicide detective looking at a satellite view of a city where a murder occurred and trying to extrapolate evidence as to what happened in a single home.
Sure, we know from other murders what one can expect to find, but in no way is that enough evidence to move forward.
Nor do we know what space actually looks like light years from earth, simply because we have only viewed less than a trillionth of a second in time of it's entire existence.

Botom line? We're simply ignorant on the subject, like that of a cat attempting calculus.

Quote from: Solar on August 28, 2015, 06:14:05 AM
We know the universe is constantly expanding,

When matter is in motion, it slows down. Our expansion is speeding up. Maybe we are all headed for a black hole?

Quote from: darroll on August 30, 2015, 11:42:34 AM
When matter is in motion, it slows down. Our expansion is speeding up. Maybe we are all headed for a black hole?

Yes, we exist in a enigma created by our own ignorance.
Fascinating article that creates more questions than we can ever hope to answer.
I don't think we're smart enough to ask the right questions, let alone grasp/understand the answers.

Dark Matter May Be More Complex Than Physicists Thought

http://www.wired.com/2015/08/dark-matter-may-complex-physicists-thought/

Solar I predict it'll be sooner than that, way sooner. They've already worked out the physics of faster than light travel. Both by creating a "warp bubble" like in Star Trek, and by using a wormhole, like in  Stargate.

In addition to that, physicists recently discovered a way to transmit information faster than light using quantum entanglement. Which they say is going to lead to what today sits as a tower on a desk, being the size of a zippo lighter.

Phsyicists have also "invented" (I say that because the idea orginated in sci-fi by others) a way to "beam" an electron from point a, instantaneously to point b. Yeah just like a teleporter, or transporter in Star Trek.

Given how fast the sum total knowledge of humankind is exponentially growing. I'd wager it'll be in the next twenty five or thirty years. That we'll be seeing faster than light communications worldwide, and faster than light space travel within the next sixty five or seventy five years if not sooner.

Fun. Cool. Entertaining.

And complete nonsense.

Warp Speed and Time Travel are not possible.

There is so much that is very likely - let's concentrate on that.

But RF resonant cavity thruster

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RF_resonant_cavity_thruster

is very cool, indeed.

(I just love anything that can't be explained.)

Quote from: SalemCat on December 23, 2015, 07:14:00 PM
(I just love anything that can't be explained.)

Such as why you don't leave, troll?

Quote from: daidalos on October 17, 2015, 08:39:44 PM
Given how fast the sum total knowledge of humankind is exponentially growing. I'd wager it'll be in the next twenty five or thirty years. That we'll be seeing faster than light communications worldwide, and faster than light space travel within the next sixty five or seventy five years if not sooner.

That ain't gonna do me no good, unless they find the fountain of youth somewhere along the way.

Quote from: daidalos on October 17, 2015, 08:39:44 PM
Solar I predict it'll be sooner than that, way sooner. They've already worked out the physics of faster than light travel. Both by creating a "warp bubble" like in Star Trek, and by using a wormhole, like in  Stargate.

In addition to that, physicists recently discovered a way to transmit information faster than light using quantum entanglement. Which they say is going to lead to what today sits as a tower on a desk, being the size of a zippo lighter.

Phsyicists have also "invented" (I say that because the idea orginated in sci-fi by others) a way to "beam" an electron from point a, instantaneously to point b. Yeah just like a teleporter, or transporter in Star Trek.

Given how fast the sum total knowledge of humankind is exponentially growing. I'd wager it'll be in the next twenty five or thirty years. That we'll be seeing faster than light communications worldwide, and faster than light space travel within the next sixty five or seventy five years if not sooner.

So you're saying we'll just find a way to quicken our demise?

If Warp Speed, Time Travel, etc., were possible, we would not be here right now.

Quote from: Solar on January 02, 2016, 06:52:29 AM

So you're saying we'll just find a way to quicken our demise?

Thirty five years ago they were saying we'd have a Moon base by now. I do not get excited about ideas, which are good, but I doubt government effectiveness. For that, when's the last time we were back on the Moon?

Humans:

sent members to a nearby moon.... check
sent robots/probes to nearby bodies... check
accelerates particles for controlled collisions... check

Not bad, if you were galactically handicapping our civilization. 

Now, the design of warp-speed vehicles would have to be practical.  The design would have to 'convince' the warp-bubble to remain a bubble.  So the USS Enterprise's design would need to be reconfigured and expanded to circumference several miles.  Crews would have to teleport within the vessel.   

Quote from: Solar on August 23, 2015, 12:39:34 PM
In this case, it's space folding, but when you reach your destination, and it happens to be a black hole?
You're in for a Hell of a ride.

You wouldn't even know it, the black hole would destroy the matter which makes up your ship, suit, you so fast.

That said, Solar it's a good point. What we can observe in the cosmos, is history. Because of relativity, when we see say a supernova, what we are seeing happened eons in our past.

Like for example this announcement that we've observed the brightest supernova explosion ever.

It's 200 million light years away.

That means the star actually blew it's lid, before mankind had even evolved on Earth. If you folded space to go there, you wouldn't find the star, you wouldn't even find the supernova.

In fact, because of relativity, we don't know if you'd even find a remnant there.

The light from there, to tell us what is or isn't left there, is still traveling here. So it will take us another 200 million years or so, before we'll be able to see what is left there.

A good example of this is this.

We always are hearing about how the sun, could throw of a solar flare, wipe out the sattelites, wipe out the electric grid, and return us all back to the early 1900's.

If the sun did throw of a solar flare like that.

We wouldn't and don't know that is has, until about eight minutes after the flare has actually erupted.

Because it takes the light from our sun, about eight minutes to reach Earth.

Where things really get weird though, is when you start adding to the mix that time like space does not remain or pass at rate that is a constant.

It can be slowed, stopped and even bent by a large enough gravitational force such as say a planet, star, black hole, galaxy.

So E=MC2 is both, right AND wrong.

It's right in that it holds true here on Earth.

And wrong in that it also considers the speed of light a universal constant which it isn't if say your in proximity to a black hole.

http://techland.time.com/2012/09/19/nasa-actually-working-on-faster-than-light-warp-drive/

Another story about faster than light travel in the news in recent years.