this post was submitted on 11 Dec 2023
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Subspace is the answer of course!

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[–] [email protected] 126 points 11 months ago (3 children)

Okay just a hot take here, but I don't think this is the biggest barrier to interstellar travel.

[–] [email protected] 48 points 11 months ago (2 children)

The worst thing about interstellar travel: no internet

[–] [email protected] 26 points 11 months ago (2 children)

Two possible solutions:

  1. No interstellar travel
  2. Selfhost everything
[–] [email protected] 15 points 11 months ago (1 children)

I once tried to set up a LAN game of Halo, and let me tell you I'm resigned to staying on earth.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 11 months ago (1 children)

Earth is a massive obstacle to network communication. Move to an o’neill cylinder and never have latency again

[–] [email protected] 8 points 11 months ago (3 children)

Are you suggesting I lead humanity into a golden interstellar post-scarcity future so that I can play halo without lag?

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[–] [email protected] 78 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago) (10 children)

Uh, no shit? That's how light works once you're able to travel at relativistic speeds - communication over interstellar distances using light is going to take ages.

Even within our own solar system interplanetary travel will have significant communication time delays.

Edit: also, we already know that matter and light can't exceed c, but I wouldn't be surprised if we discover that other forces (gravitation, or another that we haven't understood yet) can transmit information at speeds >c. I wouldn't be surprised if we turned to quantum entanglement for instantaneous communication over extreme distances either.

[–] [email protected] 38 points 11 months ago (2 children)

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.

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[–] [email protected] 24 points 11 months ago (6 children)

My first thought was 'no shit' as well. There's a horrible heartbreaking anime about that.. Voices of a Distant Star.

other forces ... can transmit information at speeds >c

I sadly disagree. Even if we figure out a way to instantaneously transport ourselves across the universe, there will be some shitty clause in fine-print that says we can't go back, or it took 0 time for us but 1 billion years for everything else.

Check out this video by Anton Petrov:

https://odysee.com/@whatdamath:8/woah!-someone-just-sent-an-impossible:4

[–] [email protected] 10 points 11 months ago (1 children)

or it took 0 time for us but 1 billion years for everything else.

That's just time travel with extra steps!

[–] [email protected] 11 points 11 months ago (1 children)

It literally is time travel.

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[–] [email protected] 17 points 11 months ago (6 children)

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!

[–] [email protected] 21 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago) (1 children)

For a variety of reasons, no information is actually transferred. Quantum entanglement can not be used to get around the limits imposed by relativity.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 11 months ago (1 children)

That's what I was trying to illustrate.

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[–] [email protected] 13 points 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.

[–] [email protected] 12 points 11 months ago (2 children)

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

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[–] [email protected] 47 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago) (5 children)

It might become like the days of sail. The fastest mode of communication might actually be the speed of ships. 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.

[–] [email protected] 24 points 11 months ago (1 children)

Never underestimate the bandwidth of a spaceship full of tapes hurtling through the cosmos.

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[–] [email protected] 15 points 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.

[–] [email protected] 11 points 11 months ago

The futuristic version of never underestimate the bandwidth of a station wagon full of tapes hurtling down the highway.

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[–] [email protected] 41 points 11 months ago (1 children)

Why is this even an article? It’s obvious.

[–] [email protected] 21 points 11 months ago (6 children)

Somebody just watched the Expanse for the first time and thinks it’s a neat new thing to explain to the Earthers

[–] [email protected] 13 points 11 months ago

That journalist is a real wellwalla

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[–] [email protected] 27 points 11 months ago
[–] [email protected] 25 points 11 months ago (1 children)

Have they never watched Star Trek, subspace relays people.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 11 months ago (6 children)

What exactly is subspace anyways?

[–] [email protected] 7 points 11 months ago (5 children)

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.

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[–] [email protected] 24 points 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!

[–] [email protected] 20 points 11 months ago (3 children)

Duh.

how could that be surprising??

_ /\ _

[–] [email protected] 9 points 11 months ago (23 children)

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

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[–] [email protected] 20 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago) (3 children)

Most people have missed the bit about time dilation messing up the clocks used in signalling, which I thought was interesting at first. However, surely the fix is just as simple as including a timing signal with the transmissions?

[–] [email protected] 11 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago)

Yeah we solved this problem in the 50s by including a clock signal in some form with the data. Most modern digital communications use it.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 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!"

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[–] [email protected] 17 points 11 months ago (7 children)

That's what ansible is for, right?

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[–] [email protected] 15 points 11 months ago (2 children)
[–] [email protected] 7 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago)

Tachyons.

heh, just noticed your username. Excellent 👌

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[–] [email protected] 13 points 11 months ago

There was an early 2000s anime movie that explored this idea. It was called Voices of a Distant Star.

[–] [email protected] 11 points 11 months ago
[–] [email protected] 11 points 11 months ago

Honestly this seems like a future me problem.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 11 months ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 10 points 11 months ago (2 children)

"뭐?" = "What?" in Korean.

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[–] [email protected] 9 points 11 months ago
[–] [email protected] 9 points 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.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 11 months ago (2 children)
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[–] [email protected] 8 points 11 months ago (11 children)

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.

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