9 ms·

> a constant 1 g acceleration would permit humans to travel through the entire known Universe in one human lifetime Wow that is actually very fascinating, it n

> a constant 1 g acceleration would permit humans to travel through the entire known Universe in one human lifetime Wow that is actually very fascinating, it never occurred to me that it works that way. I’m always thinking of 11 light years as too far away for someone to achieve in a lifetime, but I am of course thinking about that from the perspective of the person who is not traveling.

cmehdy 6y ago
I'm not sure how they calculate the 1g thing past the speed of light (which takes you something short of a year to get to by classical mechanics). But say we just break physics as we know it, and somehow the prophesized amount of time to travel is accurate. You're still going in a straight line and not stopping, unless you want to take another lifetime or be crushed by forces that would hurt just a little bit. So don't turn, only decide to stop in the first half of your life (or you won't live to see the end of the journey), beat light and physics by the end of year one of your life, and enjoy the ride. I'm not sure what you'll "see" outside of your spaceship though, and I do hope for you that there's not a single speck of dust in your path and no wall at the end.
- californical 6y ago
  I didn't read their idea, but you wouldn't ever need to go faster than the speed of light for this to work -- just approaching it infinitely close would be enough. Sure it might take a hundred million years for your journey from an observer watching you on earth, but thanks to time dilation, it could still be less than a lifetime for the person on the ship
  - cmehdy 6y ago
    Well then how do you get to the parts of our universe that are receding at a speed faster than light due to space expansion? I'm not nearly as comfortable with relativity as I'd like to be, but too much in this hypothetical "woahdude" scenario ends up being a logical roadblock to me.

cmehdy 6y ago

I'm not sure how they calculate the 1g thing past the speed of light (which takes you something short of a year to get to by classical mechanics). But say we just break physics as we know it, and somehow the prophesized amount of time to travel is accurate. You're still going in a straight line and not stopping, unless you want to take another lifetime or be crushed by forces that would hurt just a little bit. So don't turn, only decide to stop in the first half of your life (or you won't live to see the end of the journey), beat light and physics by the end of year one of your life, and enjoy the ride. I'm not sure what you'll "see" outside of your spaceship though, and I do hope for you that there's not a single speck of dust in your path and no wall at the end.

californical 6y ago
I didn't read their idea, but you wouldn't ever need to go faster than the speed of light for this to work -- just approaching it infinitely close would be enough. Sure it might take a hundred million years for your journey from an observer watching you on earth, but thanks to time dilation, it could still be less than a lifetime for the person on the ship
- cmehdy 6y ago
  Well then how do you get to the parts of our universe that are receding at a speed faster than light due to space expansion? I'm not nearly as comfortable with relativity as I'd like to be, but too much in this hypothetical "woahdude" scenario ends up being a logical roadblock to me.