# I Am Fascinated By The Universe



## Bretrick (Feb 19, 2022)

This morning (Sunay 20 Feb) I was able to ask a question on local radio and have it answered by Dr Karl Kruszelnicki, AM (Member of the Order of Australia), Science Communicator, The Julius Sumner Miller Fellow.
I put to him the question, "Will humans every be able to travel outside our Solar System considering the enormous distances and our current speed of travel.
His short answer was YES.
Not with our current technology but when we can develop Nuclear Fusion Rockets that will enable speeds of up to 3000 km/second or 10 Million kmh.
Something to look forward to.


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## Don M. (Feb 19, 2022)

If such a thing as "reincarnation" exists, I would like to come back, centuries in the future, where "warp speed" makes interstellar travel practical, and live in a Star Trek environment.


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## Bretrick (Feb 19, 2022)

Don M. said:


> If such a thing as "reincarnation" exists, I would like to come back, centuries in the future, where "warp speed" makes interstellar travel practical, and live in a Star Trek environment.


It sure would be exciting to travel the Universe and see all there is to see.


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## 1955 (Feb 19, 2022)

Bretrick said:


> "Will humans every be able to travel outside our Solar System considering the enormous distances and our current speed of travel.
> His short answer was YES.
> Not with our current technology but when we can develop Nuclear Fusion Rockets that will enable speeds of up to 3000 km/second or 10 Million kmh.
> Something to look forward to.


Not in our life time.

The nearest star is Alpha Centauri & it’s 4.37 light years away. Traveling at 3000km/s is only 100th the speed of light so not accounting for acceleration/deceleration profiles that’s a 437 year trip. Besides going fast there a lot of other technical problems that would need to be solved too. If we manage to survive ourselves maybe in a couple thousand years it might be possible.

Right now physicists have been promising fusion power as a clean source of power here on earth & it’s not looking to good. They just can’t seem to get more power out than they put in! But every 10 years they promise another 10 years & they’ll have it.

I am fascinated with the Universal too. Did you know we are literally made from star dust?


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## Bretrick (Feb 19, 2022)

1955 said:


> Not in our life time.
> 
> The nearest star is Alpha Centauri & it’s 4.37 light years away. Traveling at 3000km/s is only 100th the speed of light so not accounting for acceleration/deceleration profiles that’s a 437 year trip. Besides going fast there a lot of other technical problems that would need to be solved too. If we manage to survive ourselves maybe in a couple thousand years it might be possible.
> 
> ...


Just in.
Finally, a Fusion Reaction has generated more energy than absorbed by the fuel.

https://www.sciencealert.com/for-th...nerated-more-energy-than-absorbed-by-the-fuel


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## jakbird (Feb 20, 2022)

What's the shortest distance between two points?  Classical mechanics says a straight line, but it turns out that's wrong.  In quantum mechanics it can be a meaningless question, because there is no distance when tunneling from one point to another, disappearing at the first point, reappearing instantly at the second, without crossing the distance between.  Useless scientific fact?  Nope, you use it every day, all over the place, everywhere there's an LED light.  Photons (the light in an LED) are generated when an electron tunnels from one orbit to another, losing energy.  Now all we have to do is figure out how to make it work on something the size of a spaceship.

In the 60's StarTrek seemed a long way off.  Breakthroughs in quantum level research will bring us closer to an understanding of the underlying principles of reality (sorry, Mr. Einstein, God really does play dice with the Universe).  I hope it will also bring us closer to true space travel.

An aside on quantum tunneling: the size of the chips in integrated circuits keeps getting smaller and smaller.  One of the problems is keeping the signals going to the right place, since tunneling can occur and the signal hops over to another path all on its own.  Imagine trying to put in new plumbing in your house when the only pipes you can use look like swiss cheese.


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## Alligatorob (Feb 20, 2022)

1955 said:


> The nearest star is Alpha Centauri & it’s 4.37 light years away. Traveling at 3000km/s is only 100th the speed of light so not accounting for acceleration/deceleration profiles that’s a 437 year trip. Besides going fast there a lot of other technical problems that would need to be solved too.


Yep, seems unlikely to me...


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## 1955 (Feb 20, 2022)

Bretrick said:


> Just in.
> Finally, a Fusion Reaction has generated more energy than absorbed by the fuel.


Yeah, the industry is littered with these kinds of announcements. I think many of them are just a ploy to keep the funding coming in.

You really have to read these kind of articles carefully. The article sited is really just saying they’ve increased their output level of the fusion process itself. They go on to request peer review in hopes they have not made any mistakes in their calculations.

The real issue is does the reactor output more power than the total input necessary to achieve ignition. This is measured as the Q factor and anything less than 1 means no. Also, to become economical Q needs to be much greater than 1.

As reported by *Wikipedia* the *National Ignition Facility* holds the record for Q at 0.7, August 2021, which is probably the basis for the article. We are still a long way off with many technical challenges to solve and I’m not convinced yet that it will ever be technically possible or feasible in the time period we need.


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