Light-Speed Spaceships Would Have Trouble Phoning Home
Light-Speed Spaceships Would Have Trouble Phoning Home
Sci-fi might have spoiled us with how communication would work in space.
Okay just a hot take here, but I don't think this is the biggest barrier to interstellar travel.
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.
Also, I don't think this is anything particularly new. It's pretty logical of you think about it for a few minutes.
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.
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.
Then we need the Tim (Allen) Taylor solution.
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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
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.
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
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)
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.
From your own reference frame, another person is moving at a speed of v*c. The maximum speed at which you could send a message to that observer, without causing a paradox, looks something like c/sqrt(v) (very simplified).
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.
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.
You cannot transmit information through entangled particles, so probably not.
Oh, you already know about it. No one else should bother reading then.
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.
Never underestimate the bandwidth of a spaceship full of tapes hurtling through the cosmos.
Indeed, it’s the only thing that ever has
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.
The futuristic version of never underestimate the bandwidth of a station wagon full of tapes hurtling down the highway.
I was hoping the days of sail would be some kind of cool Sci-Fi movie or series.
Data storage ships is a thing in Beacon 23.
Why is this even an article? It’s obvious.
Somebody just watched the Expanse for the first time and thinks it’s a neat new thing to explain to the Earthers
That journalist is a real wellwalla
Also Passengers, starring Chris Pratt, has a mention of this too.
i knew the expanse would pop up somewhere in the comments! been working my way through the books and it's great!
No shit.
Have they never watched Star Trek, subspace relays people.
What exactly is subspace anyways?
Space is like a rainbow, subspace is equal to ultraviolet and hyperspace is infrared. At least inmy head cannon.
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!
Duh.
how could that be surprising??
_ /\ _
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
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.
It's not a surprise, it's just a concern being presented because it's not a thought for the average person.
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.
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?
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.
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!"
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.
Subspace interference.
Tachyons.
heh, just noticed your username. Excellent 👌
It's time for a CAKE queue management algorithm with...ahem...interplanetary RTT scheme!
There was an early 2000s anime movie that explored this idea. It was called Voices of a Distant Star.
Honestly this seems like a future me problem.
trash site
"뭐?" = "What?" in Korean.
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: https://getyarn.io/yarn-clip/d68f9dba-3745-42d2-a68c-53296b79abed
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.
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.
Jesus Christ, why'd this get so downvoted? Do people not get sarcasm?
I was actually wondering 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.
What's the propagation speed of vibrations through carbon nantubes? I've done no math or experiments but back up this startup tech 100%. 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.
Edit /s no one is towing a rope
Well since we are talking about the time when light speed is possible maybe we have invented superluminal communication
Can we quantum entangle two particles and then move one particle to part of a grid to "type" superluminally?
Nope:
They play with this in the three body problem
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?
Why dont they just get an astropath?
Because they've already got ansible.