how long would it take to get to other planets?

A long time

 

Assuming you mean planets outside of our solar system (inside with warp drive is totally reasonable).

This is a problem as we know now. Even at light speed the nearest star is 4 years of travel away!

The simple answer is wormholes - within the coming week I'll be researching them for a lecture I'm giving so once I know more I'll share it here.

 

You guys aren't factoring in time dilation. Reaching a destination 4 light years a way at near light speed travel won't take very long at all. Things are very far away but we're very lucky that time dilation seems to be a very true theory.

 

While I agree that it is a very true 'theory', I think you're a lil off. A trip 4 light years away will still take 4 years, but it's the traveler that will experience it almost instantly. So if someone made a light speed trip 4 years away and back, 8 years would of passed on Earth and the traveler would of experienced it as if it were pretty much instant.

So it really depends on who's relative PoV you're looking through. If you're not the one traveling, it'll be a long damn time. If you're the traveler, it'll be virtually instant.

 

There's an even faster way than teleporting! They call it...


Weed

 

I'm fairly certain this is also wrong. It is true that it will still take four years but it will still feel like four years to the traveler. This is because his experience of time is only different relative to someone/something that isn't moving near the speed of light.

He still experiences time normally in his ship but the actual passage of time as compared with people on Earth will be very different. To the people on Earth more than four years will have passed but it will only feel like four to the traveler.

 

actually it's possible to go faster then the speed of light.



Antimatter in back, Negative energy in the front

 

No, it is not. The Alcubierre drive (more precisely the Alcubierre Metric) only tells us if you have an existing warp bubble, it can contract the space in front and expand the space behind it in such a fashion that globally you are traveling faster than light. It doesn't tell us how to create this bubble, where we can get a fuel that has a negative-stress energy tensor (required to stabilize the bubble), and a whole host of other practical problems.

 

Denial. Just because we cant present the technology doesn't mean it's impossible

 

Sure, just like we can't have a gun that shoots out purple unicorns and doesn't recoil, because present technology is not advanced enough.

It's not a technological issue, its a fundamental physics issue. Learn the difference.

 

You got to remember the 4 light years is an example of physical distance and not time. If something is 4 light years away and Earth sends someone there at light speed, it'll take 4 years on Earth. What happens to the traveler is a different story.

While I have my doubts about light speed travel, from my understanding, the faster you move through space in space-time, the less time effects you. That's why astronauts on the ISS age slower than people on Earth, even if its by a hair. So if you travel at light speed, you're barely being effected by time.

I mean we really won't ever know what happens to life traveling at light speed, but when it comes down to making a 4 light year trip at light speed, no party should experience it as any longer than 4 years.

 

If something is 4 light years away and we send someone or something to it at light speed, how is it going to take longer than 4 Earth years to get a result? If something is a light year away (distance), it'll take an Earth year (time) to get there at light speed..

 

I think it depends on how you travel.

From what very little I know about the theory of wormholes, if you could use a wormhole to travel from one point in space to the other, it would be instantaneous.

However, with conventional space rockets.. Not in our lifetime.
Or even with solar reflectors (is that what they're called?), where you can travel abnormally quickly... still a very long time.

To leave our solar system, it would probably take so long, that future humans will have invented a faster machine and overtook us

 

Way too long

 

I find it interesting that the majority of these responses assessed technological or economical arguments. Let me propose cultural one in this quote:

"(...) Humanity will reach maturity and wisdom on the day that it begins not just to tolerate, but take a special delight in differences in ideas and differences in life forms. (...) If we cannot learn to actually enjoy those small differences, to take a positive delight in those small differences between our own kind, here on this planet, then we do not deserve to go out into space and meet the diversity that is almost certainly out there.”
-Gene Roddenberry​

 

I'm not sure if it's possible, but I think it's a worthy goal.

We've certainly come a very long way in the last couple hundred years, but we have ways to go yet.

Multiculturalism is still heavily scrutinized and misused in a great many European nations, and the inequitable distribution of wealth and resources is largely and systematically defined by gender and ethnicity. We have big problems yet to solve before we can consider ourselves anything close to an egalitarian society.

I'm not sure we're yet mature enough, but we're on our way. There will be many more pitfalls ahead, but there are some promising signs.

 

We are capable of doing so instaneously with our mind.