Subspace is the answer of course!
Uh, no shit? That’s how light works once you’re able to travel at relativistic speeds - communication over interstellar distances is going to take ages.
Light-Speed Spaceships Would Have Trouble Phoning Home
Submitted 11 months ago by kalkulat@lemmy.world to technology@lemmy.world
Comments
seaQueue@lemmy.world 11 months ago
xkforce@lemmy.world 11 months ago
Gravity travels at c. The Alcubierre drive tried to use bubbles in spacetime to “bend the rules” in order to result in apparent >c velocities but recent simulations indicate the bubble becomes unstable when attempting to exceed c.
AngryCommieKender@lemmy.world 11 months ago
Then we need the Tim (Allen) Taylor solution.
Moar Power! Uhh uhh uhh uhh uhh
KISSmyOS@lemmy.world 11 months ago
Quantum entanglement is like ripping a photo in half, putting both halves in seperate envelopes and carrying them to opposite ends of the world.
As soon as you open your envelope, you instantly know which half of the photo is on the other side of the planet - Faster Than Light Information Transfer!xkforce@lemmy.world 11 months ago
For a variety of reasons, no information is actually transfered. Quantum entanglement can not be used to get around the limits imposed by relativity.
luthis@lemmy.nz 11 months ago
This is a great analogy. Consider it stolen.
INeedMana@lemmy.world 11 months ago
So it’s not like: when I affect the hue (some attribute) of my half, the other half will change too? That has always been my understanding of it
SpacetimeMachine@lemmy.world 11 months ago
C is more than just the speed of light. It is the speed of Causality. No information can travel faster than C in a vacuum. Gravitational waves already reach us faster than the light from events that cause them (i.e. neutron star collisions) Because small particles slow down the light over long distances, as they absorb and then re-emit the photons.
SkaveRat@discuss.tchncs.de 11 months ago
The problem with information traveling ftl is, that you’re very quickly running into paradoxes. So just by logic wanting to keep intact, I feel like ftl communication will be impossible
bluGill@kbin.social 11 months ago
Logically it makes sense, but the real world is years and often we don't use the right logical systems. It makes logical sense to most people that a heavy object falls faster then a light object ,but we know that is false (and a also a non obvious logical system that also shows it is false)
justJanne@startrek.website 11 months ago
If you actually calculate the maximum speed at which information can travel before causing paradoxes, in some situations it could safely exceed c.
For two observers who are not in motion relative to each other, information could be transmitted instantly, regardless of the distance, without causing a paradox.
The faster the observers are traveling relatively to each other, the slower information would have to travel to avoid causing paradoxes.
More interestingly, this maximum paradox-free speed correlates with the time and space dilation caused by the observers’ motion.
Jamie@jamie.moe 11 months ago
By the time we invent any sort of lightspeed travel, we’ll have long conquered quantum entanglement. If you have a signal transferred over a properly quantum entangled technology, the signal would transfer instantaneously.
AngryCommieKender@lemmy.world 11 months ago
Another option would be tiny temporary Einstein Rosen bridges. Sure the energy requirements would be hideous, but if we’ve figured out how to exceed C, I don’t think we really care about energy costs anymore.
mypasswordistaco@iusearchlinux.fyi 11 months ago
You cannot transmit information through entangled particles, so probably not.
XeroxCool@lemmy.world 11 months ago
Oh, you already know about it. No one else should bother reading then.
echodot@feddit.uk 11 months ago
It might become like the days of sail. In order to get a message between earth and alpha centauri you might have to actually build messenger ships.
You might have to build small automated FTL capable ships with massive data storage capacity and then download all of the data you need to send and then set the ship off on its way.
JDubbleu@programming.dev 11 months ago
Never underestimate the bandwidth of a spaceship full of tapes hurtling through the cosmos.
intensely_human@lemm.ee 11 months ago
Indeed, it’s the only thing that ever has
Tangent5280@lemmy.world 11 months ago
Star Citizen has a ship like that. A cabin strapped onto the largest engine that wouldn’t kill you, with data storage added almost like an afterthought.
Well, star citizen has a ship like that - it doesnt have any gameplay loops that make use of that though.
WHYAREWEALLCAPS@kbin.social 11 months ago
The futuristic version of never underestimate the bandwidth of a station wagon full of tapes hurtling down the highway.
ma11en@lemmy.world 11 months ago
Data storage ships is a thing in Beacon 23.
kattenluik@feddit.nl 11 months ago
I was hoping the days of sail would be some kind of cool Sci-Fi movie or series.
FangedWyvern42@lemmy.world 11 months ago
Why is this even an article? It’s obvious.
FordBeeblebrox@lemmy.world 11 months ago
Somebody just watched the Expanse for the first time and thinks it’s a neat new thing to explain to the Earthers
bionicjoey@lemmy.ca 11 months ago
That journalist is a real wellwalla
zzx@lemmy.world 11 months ago
Is it weird that I’ve only ever read the books? I didn’t even know there was a show until recently. Is it any good?
Tangent5280@lemmy.world 11 months ago
Also Passengers, starring Chris Pratt, has a mention of this too.
Gregorech@lemmy.world 11 months ago
Have they never watched Star Trek, subspace relays people.
Buddahriffic@lemmy.world 11 months ago
What exactly is subspace anyways?
Telodzrum@lemmy.world 11 months ago
It’s a different part of the universe, separate from normal space where things like baryonic matter exists. In subspace certain of our universe’s fundamental rules as seen in normal space don’t apply or constants are different.
smeenz@lemmy.nz 11 months ago
Subspace is what the warp bubble moves through
Gregorech@lemmy.world 11 months ago
Space is like a rainbow, subspace is equal to ultraviolet and hyperspace is infrared. At least inmy head cannon.
dangblingus@lemmy.dbzer0.com 11 months ago
No shit.
Paragone@lemmy.world 11 months ago
Duh.
how could that be surprising??
_ /\ _
Arin@kbin.social 11 months ago
imo by the time we have lightspeed ships we may have faster ways to send info, imagine back 2000 years ago and we tell people we can communicate faster than the speed of sound
orrk@lemmy.world 11 months ago
data can’t go faster than the speed of light
Cosmicomical@kbin.social 11 months ago
Now i'm visualizing a world where long distance communication is done with sound and you have screaming pipes across the continent
Buddahriffic@lemmy.world 11 months ago
Maybe if we have faster than light travel we can assume that we’ll have a faster way to transmit data. It’s possible there will be a transitional period where we move at subluminal speeds and can transmit data at superluminal speeds, but I don’t think being able to hit the speed limit ourselves will imply that we can break it with data.
Plus relativity will really fuck with things if we are able to reach the speed of light. Time dilation will reduce bandwidth from the perspective of the stationary observer because they need to sync up with a clock that will appear to get slower and slower. Maybe some kind of warp technology will avoid this, but if it doesn’t, this will apply even if the signal can be transmitted instantly.
I’ve become resigned to the likelihood that if we ever do get out of this solar system, it will either be unmanned probes (like the ones we’ve already sent, which are still debatable as to whether we can consider them outside of it or not yet; they’ve passed the heliopause but haven’t gotten to the Ort Cloud yet), or they will be effectively independent branches of humanity that will diverge and become their own thing over time. We’ll be in contact (assuming both sides survive), but it will be more like pen pals where messages take years to arrive and meeting up in person is impossible. The ship will travel for generations before arriving at its destination with a good chance that they’ll just die on the way or shortly after getting there unless they are prepared for further generations of terraforming moons and planets in the new system.
And with our current situations, even that seems unlikely. I’ll be impressed if we see a self-sustainable moon colony or space station during our lifetimes or asteroid belt mining.
XeroxCool@lemmy.world 11 months ago
It’s not a surprise, it’s just a concern being presented because it’s not a thought for the average person.
sir_reginald@lemmy.world 11 months ago
isn’t developing light speed spacecrafts a far more direct concern?
why even concern about communications when travelling such distances isn’t even possible.
I don’t see the point of the article.
Deebster@programming.dev 11 months ago
Most people have missed the bit about time dilation messing up the clocks used in signalling, which I thought was interesting as first. However, surely the fix is just as simple as including a timing signal with the transmissions?
TimeSquirrel@kbin.social 11 months ago
Yeah we solved this problem in the 50s by including a clock signal.
TrickDacy@lemmy.world 11 months ago
If nothing else, you discovered a way to gloss over the impossible thing in a bad scifi movie. “No it works because we added a timing signal!”
mypasswordistaco@iusearchlinux.fyi 11 months ago
I think the problem is less timing the messages, and more that the messages from earth will just get redshifted more and more as the ship accelerates, which will require an ever larger antenna to pick up. This also has the affect of bandwidth tending towards 0.
Treczoks@lemmy.world 11 months ago
Who would have thought that Doppler could apply to communication equipment, too! Shocking!
Next they are going to tell us that messages might take some time due to c!
Lophostemon@aussie.zone 11 months ago
This is why Jesus invented ‘two cans and a piece of string’.
Dammit, I’m not even a trained physicist but I still have to do all the thinking around here.
ultra@feddit.ro 11 months ago
Jesus Christ, why’d this get so downvoted? Do people not get sarcasm?
ExLisper@linux.community 11 months ago
I was actually wander what would happen if you would just put a big rod of metal in 0 g and pushed it? If one end shifts 1 cm, how long would it take for the other end to also shift? Wouldn’t that be instant? Well, apparently the signal would travel at the speed of sound. Which is weird, right? It makes sense but it’s still weird.
Diplomjodler@feddit.de 11 months ago
But where are you going to get a string that long?
Corkyskog@sh.itjust.works 11 months ago
Isn’t that what string theory was meant to solve?
GBU_28@lemm.ee 11 months ago
The fucking string store duh
XeroxCool@lemmy.world 11 months ago
What’s the propagation speed of vibrations through carbon nantubes? I’ve done no math or experiments and believe this is the answer. I pull on it at Alpha Centauri, it instantaneously pulls a receiver at Sol. I’d say a vat of liquid nylon with a thread pulled and dragged but that sounds sticky.
Daefsdeda@sh.itjust.works 11 months ago
Speed is always the same as the speed of sound through the item
astropenguin5@lemmy.world 11 months ago
Now I’m imagining spider-ships traversing the galaxy making strings of filament behind them, connecting the galaxy in a vast web of communication lines.
ExLisper@linux.community 11 months ago
That’s what ansible is for, right?
Tangent5280@lemmy.world 11 months ago
Enders Game reference?
ccdfa@lemm.ee 11 months ago
Booo. Orson Scott Card took that term from Ursula K. Le Guin.
subspaceinterferents@lemmy.world 11 months ago
Subspace interference.
nxdefiant@startrek.website 11 months ago
Tachyons.
WindowsEnjoyer@sh.itjust.works 11 months ago
It’s time for a CAKE queue management algorithm with…ahem…interplanetary RTT scheme!
magikmw@lemm.ee 11 months ago
Honestly this seems like a future me problem.
Kit@lemmy.blahaj.zone 11 months ago
There was an early 2000s anime movie that explored this idea. It was called Voices of a Distant Star.
1847953620@lemmy.world 11 months ago
trash site
Thcdenton@lemmy.world 11 months ago
xia@lemmy.sdf.org 11 months ago
Underwaterbob@lemm.ee 11 months ago
“뭐?” = “What?” in Korean.
xia@lemmy.sdf.org 11 months ago
I tried to upload a GIF, but it auto-converted to a PNG. I don’t know if it is Lemmy or my client. You can see it here: getyarn.io/…/d68f9dba-3745-42d2-a68c-53296b79abed
TrickedPrivacy@lemmy.world 11 months ago
Quantum Entanglement
CADmonkey@lemmy.world 11 months ago
Jerry Pournelle’s “CoDominium” books work like this. The ships are FTL, but can only use the FTL drive at a certain point to leave a system. There isn’t a way to send messages faster than light, other than a ship. There is mention of “message sloops” which are small ships with high acceleration wich can move from the jump point to the inner system faster than one of the battleships.
Varyk@sh.itjust.works 11 months ago
Can we quantum entangle two particles and then move one particle to part of a grid to “type” superluminally?
Nope:
GBU_28@lemm.ee 11 months ago
They play with this in the three body problem
Varyk@sh.itjust.works 11 months ago
Maybe that’s where I got the idea, I read the trilogy years ago. That was such a good series.
I don’t remember though. Did they solve the problem?
Usernamealreadyinuse@lemmy.world 11 months ago
Well since we are talking about the time when light speed is possible maybe we have invented superluminal communication
KISSmyOS@lemmy.world 11 months ago
chitak166@lemmy.world 11 months ago
Everything moves at light speed.
Mandy@sh.itjust.works 11 months ago
Why dont they just get an astropath?
Everythingispenguins@lemmy.world 11 months ago
Okay just a hot take here, but I don’t think this is the biggest barrier to interstellar travel.
CurlyMoustache@lemmy.world 11 months ago
The worst thing about interstellar travel: no internet
elfio@sh.itjust.works 11 months ago
Two possible solutions:
Tronn4@lemmy.world 11 months ago
Buddy can you imagine all the new alien pron in the new system though?
iAvicenna@lemmy.world 11 months ago
I mean space is pretty empty yea but I feel like it would be a pain in the ass to prevent a ship travelling at light speed from bumping into small to mid sized space debris. On the other hand, I am imagining with this much drive on energy techs we will be at some point able to come up with a solution to the energy requirement to power such a vessel.
astropenguin5@lemmy.world 11 months ago
Also, I don’t think this is anything particularly new. It’s pretty logical of you think about it for a few minutes.