How much longer do humans have?

@Metal-Brain
If we can circumvent space, then c will not be the limit. It is space that does not allow mass to go faster than light.
Space itself could care less about that as is shown by the fact the universe is expanding faster than c as we speak.
A rocket will never go even close to c but we don't know what will develop in that regard in the next century or two.

@sonhouse said
@Metal-Brain
If we can circumvent space, then c will not be the limit. It is space that does not allow mass to go faster than light.
Space itself could care less about that as is shown by the fact the universe is expanding faster than c as we speak.
A rocket will never go even close to c but we don't know what will develop in that regard in the next century or two.

Maybe entangled particles can do that with unpredictable results, but getting a hunk of matter to do that is probably impossible. People are watching too many scifi shows.

@Metal-Brain
Of course when you say 'probable' you are admitting you don't know and are guessing, trying to outguess what kind of science will advance in the quantum world.
I make no such prediction, just hope we last the next couple hundred years as a civilization to allow major science to continue to grow unabated.
There are for instance, interesting worlds to explore within 10 light years of Earth, the closest one a triple system so three bangs for the buck, just 4.2 light years away, Alpha Centauri and one of them at least has a planet in the goldilocks zone where liquid water can stay liquid with the caveat its sun has fits now and again sending discharges flying around even though it is a red dwarf and that planet is very close in which it has to be because the energy coming off that star is very low so if we ever get there we may find life never had a chance but we won't know till we get there and if we last another 200 years or so with the present growth of science we may get there yet, even if it is only by probes, there are technologies afoot that could send paper thin probes with cameras onboard powered by powerful lasers that could get those little probes near the speed of light but that is for the future to prove and now it is only hypothesis.
If we could get to even 1/10th of c we get to Alpha Centauri in some 40 years or 20 years if we get to 20% of c.
All speculation of course at this juncture.

@sonhouse said
@Metal-Brain
Of course when you say 'probable' you are admitting you don't know and are guessing, trying to outguess what kind of science will advance in the quantum world.
I make no such prediction, just hope we last the next couple hundred years as a civilization to allow major science to continue to grow unabated.
There are for instance, interesting worlds to explore w ...[text shortened]... ri in some 40 years or 20 years if we get to 20% of c.
All speculation of course at this juncture.

Apparently Alpha Centauri is moving closer to the Earth but very slowly.
I don't really understand how this works in an expanding universe but I suppose it's to do with the rotation of the milky way similar to the planets revolving around the sun

@venda said
Apparently Alpha Centauri is moving closer to the Earth but very slowly.
I don't really understand how this works in an expanding universe but I suppose it's to do with the rotation of the milky way similar to the planets revolving around the sun

The movement between Alpha Centary A and B and Proxima Centaury is quite complex.

But they all belong to a number of stars which wander the same in relation to our solar System and will be "only" three Lightyears in distance about 28000 years in the future.

And to relate to the OP: I don't expect humans to be a round by that time.

@Ponderable
Humans maybe but not looking good for advanced civilization. We are too stupid to get together to stop this present climate change crisis caused by humans.
I think when the ice caps and glaciers all start to melt big time and places like Florida starts disappearing all that will happen is building bigger walls to keep out the ocean like the Dutch dikes. Not sure how they would manage a 50 foot high wall around the entire country though.

@pianoman1 said
@divegeester
The only way we can ever traverse the mind-boggling immense distances in space, even to reach the nearest star, let alone the nearest galaxy is by employing a method that in Dune is described as ‘folding space’ and Star Trek using a ‘warp drive’.

Apparently this is theoretically possible.

Einstein’s general theory of relativity states that ...[text shortened]... ive faster than light travel, instantly connecting all parts of the universe.

Science or fiction?

Generation ships can do it very slowly

@sonhouse said
@Metal-Brain
Of course when you say 'probable' you are admitting you don't know and are guessing, trying to outguess what kind of science will advance in the quantum world.
I make no such prediction, just hope we last the next couple hundred years as a civilization to allow major science to continue to grow unabated.
There are for instance, interesting worlds to explore w ...[text shortened]... ri in some 40 years or 20 years if we get to 20% of c.
All speculation of course at this juncture.

That would take too long for people. They would die of old age before they got there and I don't think it would be ethical to give your offspring no choice but to live and die without ever seeing earth.

That is a job for robots. Eventually we will get better at designing robots and they will be much more sophisticated than the robots we have now. We might be able to build robots that build other robots and we can send them. There is no sense in sending people to a star system that probably will not have a habitable planet in orbit.

@Metal-Brain
We don't know what technology will come up in the next hundred years or 50 or 20 for that matter.
We just got an asteroid sample return to Earth after a 4 billion mile trip, just yesterday.
One sci fi theme is the generational ship, where people live and die and are born on a craft going maybe 10% of c. There are also stories where people are in suspended animation for a journey maybe lasting a few hundred years, all speculation but things like can come about, we just don't know yet.
I did some work on gravitational lenses and found a nice amplified light stream coming from all stars, the most interesting ones being the close and bright ones, there light gets focused into a powerful beam which I showed is a beam of amplified light that lasts for about the distance between a star and our sun, so Sirius would generate an 8 light year free ride using solar sails and the caveat is it can provide energy for that 8 light years but you better chose a light beam that goes somewhere you want to go because a straight line from Sirius and the sun, on the opposite side is a focused beam from Sirius and if there is nothing near the path you want to go to it would be a pretty useless beam to ride. Beam riders could sprout up when the science world realizes that potential.
Alpha Centauri would have it's own beam, about 4 light years long and in a totally different direction than Sirius and so forth.
Not sure how fast you could go but if it had acel of say 1/100th of a G in a long beam you would go very fast, totally guessing what kind of acceleration you could get from being a beam rider but 1% G for ten years would give you a velocity of 10 % of c and if you could crank up 10% of G, 3.2 F/sec/sec, ten years would get you near the speed of light but it it is totally speculation how much thrust a solar sail would get from such beams.

@sonhouse said
@Metal-Brain
We don't know what technology will come up in the next hundred years or 50 or 20 for that matter.
We just got an asteroid sample return to Earth after a 4 billion mile trip, just yesterday.
One sci fi theme is the generational ship, where people live and die and are born on a craft going maybe 10% of c. There are also stories where people are in suspended ani ...[text shortened]... ed of light but it it is totally speculation how much thrust a solar sail would get from such beams.

So now you don't believe Einstein was right when he said c is the speed limit?
Why do you think you are smarter than Einstein was?

@metal-brain said
So now you don't believe Einstein was right when he said c is the speed limit?
Why do you think you are smarter than Einstein was?

Einstein was correct with the available data. However, Lentz proposes that conventional energy sources could be capable of arranging the structure of space–time in the form of a soliton – a robust singular wave. This soliton would act like a “warp bubble’”, contracting space in front of it and expanding space behind. Unlike objects within space–time, space–time itself can bend, expand or warp at any speed. Therefore, a spacecraft contained in a hyperfast bubble could arrive at its destination faster than light would in normal space without breaking any physical laws, even Einstein’s cosmic speed limit.

@pianoman1 said
Einstein was correct with the available data. However, Lentz proposes that conventional energy sources could be capable of arranging the structure of space–time in the form of a soliton – a robust singular wave. This soliton would act like a “warp bubble’”, contracting space in front of it and expanding space behind. Unlike objects within space–time, space–time itself can b ...[text shortened]... light would in normal space without breaking any physical laws, even Einstein’s cosmic speed limit.

"This soliton would act like a “warp bubble’”, contracting space in front of it and expanding space behind."

How are you going to contract and expand space?

@metal-brain said
"This soliton would act like a “warp bubble’”, contracting space in front of it and expanding space behind."

How are you going to contract and expand space?

Short answer - we don’t know. Science has speculated at the possibility, but not provided the means.

@pianoman1 said
Short answer - we don’t know. Science has speculated at the possibility, but not provided the means.

That is the problem. Nobody can prove it is possible.

I know taking a whole lifetime to reach the nearest star makes for boring sci fi shows, but that is likely the reality.

@metal-brain said
That is the problem. Nobody can prove it is possible.

I know taking a whole lifetime to reach the nearest star makes for boring sci fi shows, but that is likely the reality.

We live in an unquantifiable sliver of time we call now, its leading edge and trailing edge occupy the same place. No matter where we go there we are, the most important thing is not our location or when, it is who we are and why. 😀