History, Travel, Arts, Science, People, Places. How NASA might build its very first warp drive. I want to see this work as much as anyone else on io9, but every time I read an article on warp drive, I expend so much mental energy trying to wrap my head around the concept that my entire left hand side goes numb.
Somewhere along the line my understanding of concepts such as the nature of Spacetime is deficient. Here's the problem. When I think about the idea of expanding the conceptual framework that describes the continuum between two abstract concepts, behind a spaceship, whilst contracting the conceptual framework that describes the continuum between two abstract concepts, in front of a spaceship; all I can think of is that this like saying that when in conversation with another person, I can reach out with my hand, grasp hold of the words that are coming out of that other persons mouth and fold them in half.
If someone could point me towards some legible books that I could buy that would help me understand where my understanding has gone wrong, I would be grateful. Thanks. The Mars Landing Approach: Getting Large Payloads to the Surface of the Red Planet. Want to stay on top of all the space news?
Follow @universetoday on Twitter Some proponents of human missions to Mars say we have the technology today to send people to the Red Planet. But do we? Rob Manning of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory discusses the intricacies of entry, descent and landing and what needs to be done to make humans on Mars a reality. There’s no comfort in the statistics for missions to Mars. Nobody knows how to do it. Surprised?
“It turns out that most people aren’t aware of this problem and very few have worried about the details of how you get something very heavy safely to the surface of Mars,” said Manning. He believes many people immediately come to the conclusion that landing humans on Mars should be easy. But as of now, the dots will need to connect across a large abyss. “We know what the problems are. The real problem is the combination of Mars’ atmosphere and the size of spacecraft needed for human missions. “That’s a good fraction of the Rose Bowl. Physicists reveal how the universe guarantees paradox-free time travel.
Hold on, let me see if I'm reading this right.
You could travel into your past and TRY to murder your grandfather, but incredibly unlikely eventualities would occur to STOP you from actually killing him. This implies something else, which isn't stated here: determinism. This Universe, the one we live in, has already decided what its future will be (in other words, all points of the timeline are already determined). Your grandfather CAN'T be allowed to die, because this is a Universe in which you end up being born into. So, if this is the case, the time travel itself is moot. Does that mean that every unexplained, unlikely, improbably or otherwise bizarre event in this universe (or any other, naturally) could be the result of the Universe course-correcting itself? New planets discovered, but not one can support Life. By Benjamin Gaul: We live on a Rare Planet in a Special Solar System in the Unique Space of an Uncommon Galaxy in a Universe which seems designed from end to end to support Life on Earth.
“Either we are alone in the Universe or we are not. In either case, the idea is quite staggering.” ~Arthur C. Clarke~ He also said “No intelligent person can contemplate the night sky without a sense of awe. Through hard work, terabytes of evidence, testable scientific reasoning and an unquenchable thirst for knowledge, we have narrowed down the Factors which are Absolutely Necessary for Life.
I know there are some of you out there who feel we’re rather Carbon-Centric in our assumptions of what Life can be. What it really all boils down to is how very very very virtually impossible it is -statistically speaking- to find Real Estate capable of supporting Life. N* = the number of stars in the Milky Way galaxy: 100 Billion, give or take. FL = fraction of those planets where life actually evolves: Ah.