Relativistic space travel: Questions without answers

The universe is an extremely big place and have a reasonable life there are plenty of opportunities for development among the stars. With such a huge Universe we can never see. Even at a speed close to light, it will take many years to cross the abyss between the stars. The good news is, if you believe the scientists Raytheon, is that we will be able to detect aliens even if they will move with amazing relativistic velocities.

Everything we know about physics and working of the Universe, tells us that nothing can travel at a speed close to or exceeding light. You can spend all available energy for acceleration of the spacecraft, but it will still be a fraction of a second slower than the photon. While such a feat is beyond our capabilities, but on paper it is. Can an advanced civilization from a distant star come to us at the speed of 99% the speed of light?

On the path of a spaceship traveling between the stars, there may not be any planets and asteroids. But they will interact with light and radiation as the spacecraft. This is the key to finding nimble cosmic Wanderers, so consider Ulvi Yurtsever and Stephen Wilkinson from Raytheon.

When the spacecraft is approaching relativistic speed, it begins to interact with the photons of the cosmic microwave background. It is the energy from the Big Bang billions of years ago, and it is everywhere. Each cubic centimeter of the Universe contains about 400 photons of microwave energy left over from the Big Bang. The ship will encounter a large proportion of such particles, moving at such speed, and test the resistance, so that the particles will slow down.





If we assume that an alien spaceship has enough power to overcome this resistance, as we shall see, that he is moving? According to scientists, the relativistic motion of the ship will cause the scattering pattern in the cosmic microwave background radiation. This frequency shift will be visible on Earth with the help of astronomical instruments. Yurtsever and Wilkinson estimated that this violation will occur in turagentstvo-infrared spectrum and that this signal moves as you move the camera in space.

When it comes to relativistic space travel, there are many unanswered questions. Although space is mostly empty, sometimes it contains dust particles. At low speeds they are not dangerous. But when driving at nearly the speed of light a speck of dust can be potentially dangerous. Perhaps the movement at a lower speed will be better because will not cause the ripple effect described in the article.

Of course all of this assumes that there is a fictional technology that allows you to move faster than the speed of light. If it was possible, aliens would already be here and we would even not know about it.published

Source: hi-news.ru