Interstellar travel
By Anthony SanFilippo
When a person refers to the universe as space, they happen
to be making an incredibly accurate description. Much of the universe as we
know it today is empty space. When Professor Bell remarks that Alpha Centauri,
the closest star system in the solar system, is about 4 light years away, we
may think, well that isn’t really that far. However if you think about it 4
light years is 2.5 x 10^15 miles. With our current spacecraft it would take
over 100,000 years to reach Alpha Centauri. That is an unfathomable amount of distance;
however there are scientists that are considering the implications of
interstellar travel. While in science fiction movies such as Star Wars and Star
Trek, our descendants hop into their spaceship and arrive at another galaxy, in
reality we do not have the technology currently available to perform such a
feat. The only possible way to perform space travel in the future is to build
spaceships that travel at close to the speed of light. According to our
textbook and other publications there are 2 proposed designs of spacecraft that
could in theory provide us an option for interstellar travel.
The first idea proposed in the 1960s is Project Orion where
a spacecraft is accelerated by the detonation of hydrogen bombs which in turn
would propel it forward at incredibly high speeds. However some limitations include
the sheer size of the spacecraft needed to make such a long journey and the
enormous expense. Some estimate for the design had the spacecraft being as big
as a large city. Furthermore this design is now not being proposed because of a
ban on the explosion of nuclear bombs.
http://www.scifiideas.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/01/project-orion-300x198.jpg
Another design which has been proposed is building a
spacecraft with engines that make the use of matter-antimatter annihilations. Antimatter
is known as the most potent fuel in the universe. When antimatter meets matter,
both annihilate in a flash of energy, making a complete conversion to energy. For
example while tons of chemical fuel are needed to propel a human mission to
Mars, just tens of milligrams of antimatter will fuel a spacecraft for the same
journey. However there are many limitations to this design most notably including
the fact that there are no known stores of antimatter currently known to exist.
Thus we would have to manufacture antimatter, and current technology does not
allow us to do that. However research is currently being conducted by NASA in
order to make the creation of antimatter (which has to be done in particle
accelerators) more cost effectively and of higher quantity.
http://www.aspera-eu.org/images/stories/news/september11/antimatterspacecraft.jpg
In the end only time will tell if we or our descendants are
able to complete interstellar travel. I could only imagine being on a space
ship that travels at close to the speed of light, as we would be able to see Einstein’s
time dilation’s impact on the human species. I have hope that one day we may
meet another life form in the universe. I just hope it doesn’t end like in the movies,
with the humans being annihilated by the aliens.
Sources
The cosmic perspective Chapter 24
This is a very interesting concept. It is unfortunate that we have to refrain from the pursuit of knowledge because of the fear of that knowledge being used on Earth. Interstellar travel is definitely one of the next steps to find what is out there.
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