Kaidan Alenko (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
not_a_whiner) wrote in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png)
fandomhigh2013-10-25 09:35 am
not_a_whiner) wrote in fandomhigh2013-10-25 09:35 am
Entry tags:
Space!, Friday
"Interstellar travel," Kaidan began, "Has long since been something that fascinates us. Uh, in my time, we've found a way around them, through the mass relays-- but before that happened, we spent a lot of time trying to figure out how it could work."
"The big problem is that space is big. Really big," he continued, wryly. He pointed at the holographic image of the galaxy behind him. "This is just our galaxy. It's over a hundred thousand lightyears in diameter. A lightyear is the distance light travels in a year, meaning six trillion miles. Try finding a car that can cover that distance in less than a few thousand human lifetimes. Hell, the star closest to us - Alpha Centauri - is still 4.2421 lightyears away from us. Think about that one for a minute."
"So we had to start looking at the question: how can we go fast enough to make the trip worth it?" he asked. "Turns out, that's another problem. If we hit lightspeed - which would still mean it'd take us over four thousand years just to get to the nearest star - we run into a couple of questions. The first problem physicists thought of has been proven to be untrue, but let's consider it anyway: time dilation. They thought that the closer we got to lightspeed, the more time would get compacted for the moving object. So... you go somewhere at light speed, it might be twenty days for you and a year for everybody outside of your vessel."
He shrugged. "Turns out the difference isn't as radical as we originally thought," he said, "But we didn't figure that one out until we figured out the second problem, which is how do we get a ship to go that fast to begin with? To reach those kinds of speeds, you need an incredible amount of energy, an amount we first thought was basically infinite just to get to the speed of light." He looked thoughtful. "Of course, in my time, we discovered element zero, which has certain qualities that help us bend laws that we used to think were absolute," he said. "But most of you - all of you, maybe - don't have that yet. So... let's conduct some research today. What's the fastest object that's been created in your time and universe? What theories do people have about being able to go faster that you think are feasible?"
"The big problem is that space is big. Really big," he continued, wryly. He pointed at the holographic image of the galaxy behind him. "This is just our galaxy. It's over a hundred thousand lightyears in diameter. A lightyear is the distance light travels in a year, meaning six trillion miles. Try finding a car that can cover that distance in less than a few thousand human lifetimes. Hell, the star closest to us - Alpha Centauri - is still 4.2421 lightyears away from us. Think about that one for a minute."
"So we had to start looking at the question: how can we go fast enough to make the trip worth it?" he asked. "Turns out, that's another problem. If we hit lightspeed - which would still mean it'd take us over four thousand years just to get to the nearest star - we run into a couple of questions. The first problem physicists thought of has been proven to be untrue, but let's consider it anyway: time dilation. They thought that the closer we got to lightspeed, the more time would get compacted for the moving object. So... you go somewhere at light speed, it might be twenty days for you and a year for everybody outside of your vessel."
He shrugged. "Turns out the difference isn't as radical as we originally thought," he said, "But we didn't figure that one out until we figured out the second problem, which is how do we get a ship to go that fast to begin with? To reach those kinds of speeds, you need an incredible amount of energy, an amount we first thought was basically infinite just to get to the speed of light." He looked thoughtful. "Of course, in my time, we discovered element zero, which has certain qualities that help us bend laws that we used to think were absolute," he said. "But most of you - all of you, maybe - don't have that yet. So... let's conduct some research today. What's the fastest object that's been created in your time and universe? What theories do people have about being able to go faster that you think are feasible?"
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Huh.
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He thought some more. "I imagine the easiest way to make something go faster would be to slow down time."
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