Interstellar travel. Can we do it?

Challenges of interstellar travel. Since there is no real break-through science to achieve this it might be quite simple to do. But it is not. One such challenge is the distance. Such distances cannot be achieved in one human lifetime. One example is the nearest star to us Proxima Centauri. It is 4.23 light years away which about the rate of our fastest spacecraft would take years to get to.

Challenges Not only are these great distances not possible to live through but we also dont have the sufficient energy to power these spacecraft for so long. If we cant come up with the technology to decrease our speed so we dont have to decelerate the speed we wouldnt have enough energy, noting that decelerating doubles the energy cost of the ship.

How might we overcome these challenges? One scientist created an idea that is called Alcubierre Drive. Now explaining such a thing is quite hard, but the theory is having on board of your spacecraft a device that is capable of bending space and time creating a wave that propels you forward at great speeds.

Wormholes During class we discussed little of wormholes, and know that they are rips or bends in time or space that allow you to get from one place to another in a very short amount of time. One type of wormhole is actually a black hole. The only reason we cant travel through these is because these collapse to quickly for anything to cross from one end to another. These wormholes would allow us to achieve interstellar travel in a fraction of the time it would take with regular space travel. The theory suggest that certain parts of space and time are allowed to be negative to ordinary energy. This also supports the idea of Alcubierre Drive, being able to travel faster than the speed of light by bending space and time around you to propel yourself with a wave of the space time fabric.

Electromagnetism This is one of the four main interactions in nature. The idea states that gravity has affects electromagnetism but if we could some how reverse this to wear electromagnetism affects gravity we could warp time itself to achieve, we could use this to propel ourselves through the universe at a much quicker rate.

Time travel Now this idea is not as serious as the others but might someday be achieved through bending space and time. If we were able to somehow cause a tear in the space-time fabric we might be able to go back to when the universe first began. Wormholes are a possible idea to be able to send you forwards or backwards in time.

Energy If we are able to complete such things, then the next challenge we need to overcome would be the energy crisis. For us to travel to the nearest star we would have to save all the energy we use in a year just to get the spacecraft to the nearest star.

Some solutions to these challenges Now these challenges and the solutions some people came up with, seem quite intimidating but they aren't as bad as you might think. One solution I came up with might be that instead of saving energy for one entire year, over a longer period of time we store up enough energy to send the spacecraft to the star. Now we dont always have to send people to other places but instead AI units such as computers or maybe even simple robots like the ones we used to explore mars. The idea of using AI to explore these new places would eliminate people trying to survive the trip our trying to create a new type of device to travel through time faster.

Interstellar travel This idea might be possible to do in the future, but signs of these new ideas being achieved in the coming years is close to none. So the likeliness of us being able to travel to new stars in the close future wont be possible. However if we keep moving forward, trying to find new ideas, and the force to unify the other 4 forces, I think that we can achieve interstellar travel while we are living on this earth.

By Tyler Trappanese l l gy/warp/ipspaper.html gy/warp/ipspaper.html wiki100k/docs/Alcubierre_drive.html