Text 28674, 40 rader
Skriven 2007-05-06 13:31:00 av VERN HUMPHREY
     Kommentar till en text av JOHN HULL
Ärende: Muslems
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JH> VH> Remember, having reached the speed of light, you must now DECELERATE to
JH> VH> make landfall on your planet -- which will take just as long as it took
JH> VH> you to reach light speed.

JH>That's oversimplified from what I found on a couple of websites.  For exampl
JH>your acceleration rate is for gravity in atmosphere, and you can never actua
JH>reach the speed of light in normal space (according to Einstein), etc.  But
JH>still understood the intent of your question, which was to imply that we can
JH>never reach another inhabited star because the distances are too far to make
JH>humanly possible.  As I said, I don't think that to be the case, and neither
JH>a lot of people way smarter than me.

Of course it's over-simplified.  We're not trying to prove string
theory here.

The purpose of the calculation is to show that the nearest star is too
far away for a human to reach in his lifespan.  And since MOST stars are
much farther away (and the nearer stars have no intelligent life, else
we'd have heard them), there is little liklihood of us ever finding an
inhabitable planet that we can reach.


JH> VH> My son-in-law, who is an Aerospace engineer with NASA tells me he
JH> VH> doesn't believe we will ever reach the speed of light.


JH>Remember that most learned scientists once thought the earth was flat,

When was that?  Eratosthenese, the first Librarian, knew the world was
round and measured it about 300 BC.

JH>and t
JH>the earth revolved around the sun. Considering where we were in physics just
JH>100 years ago, I would not presume to assume that we know everything there i
JH>to know about quantum physics, or the behavior of light.

Actually, the Theory of Relativity is nearly 100 years old, and I don't
know of any modern scientist who thinks it can be refuted.
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