94% of the universe’s galaxies are permanently beyond our reach

[Anomalism]

In fact, right now 100% of the Stars beyond our sun are unreachable by us any time soon.

At current rates, the closest star, Proxima Centauri (app a mere 4 Light Years) would take 73,000 years to reach.

Unless we discover something completely game-changing we're going to be stuck in our solar system for a very long time. Either way no big deal. I'm plenty excited for us to explore the many interesting moons in our own solar system.

How awesome would it be if we discovered another occurrence of life in our own backyard?

 

[Paul Essien]

94%? Well that sucks. So we can only visit about 12 billion galaxies.

Eventually that 94% of galaxies will disappear over the horizon like a sailboat.

Keep in mind: this is a snapshot, if we were ale to leave today at the speed of light. The percentage of galaxies we can never visit grows by the minute. If we just sit here long enough, there will be no galaxies in the sky, save for our own. (And then Hubble would lose the Great Debate!)

94% of the universe's galaxies are permanently beyond our reach

Even if we left today, at the speed of light, we'd never catch up to these unreachable galaxies as dark energy expands the universe.

bigthink.com

• The universe is expanding, with every galaxy beyond the Local Group speeding away from us.
• Today, most of the universe's galaxies are already receding faster than the speed of light.
• All galaxies currently beyond 18 billion light-years are forever unreachable by us, no matter how much time passes.

It is possible but the key lies in humans perception of time. Extending human lifespan seems more plausible than developing engines that can get close to the speed of light. Longer lives will cause humans to perceive time differently and this makes it easier to bear the burden of a long mission to another galaxy.

So, imagine a future where humans have enhanced human bodies by replacing human inefficient human organs with various mechanized and computer-controlled parts. Where human cells either don’t decay or automatically regenerate. Where humans would look somewhat like the people in the picture above. Humans wouldn’t need to be complete androids, as long as humans achieve the goal of extending human lifespans by several millenia.

Impossible?

That’s what people in the 18th Century would say, when you tell them that humans can talk to someone on the other side of the globe now with almost no delay. Or that humans are planning to colonize Mars and have already walked on the moon.

The far future is always near impossible to imagine and technology becomes almost like magic.

In truth, humans are already making progress on this. If you have heart problems, you can get a pacemaker. If you lose a limb, you can get a prosthesis. Humans are beginning to grasp the concepts of cloning organs or creating them from scratch. Humans are making their first baby steps with cell regeneration and extending the lifespans of creatures such as mice.

The reason why humans grow old and eventually die, doesn’t seem so hard to grasp: Humans cells decay and fail to perfectly regenerate (with defects such as cancer as a possible result). If humans can perfect this process, then humans become pretty much immortal.

The reason why I believe immortality is the answer and not super-crazy-fast-lightspeed-engines, is because even if you achieve 1.0c (100% the speed of light), it would take a human 100–180 millenia to travel from one side of the Milky Way to the other. Let alone travelling to another galaxy. That’s about 1000 human generations.

However, if humans are immortal, then such a long journey might feel similar to you as if you take a 12-hour plane flight from London to Tokyo. Long and a bit boring, but compared to your entire life it is not that significant.

Of course, cryonics (freezing a humans body) is another option that could work with this. Or wormhole travel, multiple dimensions or the number 42

 

[CrusaderFrank]

The CO2 readings are so high on those fleeing galaxies, we're better off without them

 

[CrusaderFrank]

We're only constrained by our flawed idea that awareness is limited to the Lego blocks of the physical Universe

 

[james bond]

The CO2 readings are so high on those fleeing galaxies, we're better off without them

Venus' atmosphere is over 90% sulfuric acid, so some hideous being would have to live there.

Yet, we have do our due diligence and visit there -- UAF researcher on science team for unmanned Venus mission

 

[Wuwei]

It is a seemingly well-known fact that the speed of light cannot be breached in our universe, but that has been outright proven wrong by researchers from NEC Research Institute in Princeton, US. They passed a laser beam through a chamber of specially prepared gas and clocked its time. As it turned out, the beam was observed to be 300 times faster than the speed of light. Incredibly, the beam exited the chamber before it had entered it, which appears to violate the law of cause and effect as theorized by Einstein. It is like seeing the TV turn on before you press the switch on your remote. But then again, as the researchers explain, that law is not technically being broken, as the beam of the future has no means to affect the conditions in the past, which proves that Einstein wasn’t wrong, after all. Wrong or not, the experiment still managed to prove that the light speed barrier can in fact be broken and that effect can precede cause.

I remember reading about a crystal structure where the beam could exit before it entered. A pulse of light is gaussian shaped (bell shaped). The peak of the bell defines the most probable position of the pulse. As the wave starts to enter the crystal the crystal amplifies it considerably so the entering part of the wave becomes larger than the peak that follows. That amplified wave will exit the crystal before the wave peak enters. The crystal reflects back an interference wave that cancels the entering peak so that the peak has seemingly shifted forward in space. And thereby the most probable position shifts forward in space.

The phenomenon doesn't do anything useful except to make an interesting faster-than-light title for a journal paper.

.

 

[abu afak]

Venus' atmosphere is over 90% sulfuric acid, so some hideous being would have to live there.

Yet, we have do our due diligence and visit there -- UAF researcher on science team for unmanned Venus mission

"The atmosphere of Venus is made up Almost Completely of Carbon Dioxide. It also includes Small doses of nitrogen and clouds of sulfuric acid."

Venus' Atmosphere: Composition, Climate and Weather

Venus' atmosphere has led to an extreme version of the same greenhouse effect causing climate change on Earth.

www.space.com

`

 

[JoeMoma]

At 52 I doubt I will see the time when many people will travel to Space -- even Earth's orbit.

Whit in the next 500 years we may have a million or more people living off Earth which will be a small fraction of the billions of people living on earth (if we don't destroy our selves first).

 

[Devils_Advocate]

They said the Earth was flat, we couldn’t fly, never make it to space, live in space and yet all that has happened, so why believe people when sooner or later they will be proven wrong?

 

[Fort Fun Indiana]

Like about the Big Bang, which we know almost nothing, but we speculate about.

In the strict sense of Big Bang Theory, -- the idea that there was a rapid expansion of the universe -- it is pretty much confirmed. We took a picture of it. But the idea of a singularity prior to the Big Bang is up in the air and is actually starting to fall out of favor.

 

[Fort Fun Indiana]

View attachment 553686

It is possible but the key lies in humans perception of time. Extending human lifespan seems more plausible than developing engines that can get close to the speed of light. Longer lives will cause humans to perceive time differently and this makes it easier to bear the burden of a long mission to another galaxy.

So, imagine a future where humans have enhanced human bodies by replacing human inefficient human organs with various mechanized and computer-controlled parts. Where human cells either don’t decay or automatically regenerate. Where humans would look somewhat like the people in the picture above. Humans wouldn’t need to be complete androids, as long as humans achieve the goal of extending human lifespans by several millenia.

Impossible?

That’s what people in the 18th Century would say, when you tell them that humans can talk to someone on the other side of the globe now with almost no delay. Or that humans are planning to colonize Mars and have already walked on the moon.

The far future is always near impossible to imagine and technology becomes almost like magic.

In truth, humans are already making progress on this. If you have heart problems, you can get a pacemaker. If you lose a limb, you can get a prosthesis. Humans are beginning to grasp the concepts of cloning organs or creating them from scratch. Humans are making their first baby steps with cell regeneration and extending the lifespans of creatures such as mice.

The reason why humans grow old and eventually die, doesn’t seem so hard to grasp: Humans cells decay and fail to perfectly regenerate (with defects such as cancer as a possible result). If humans can perfect this process, then humans become pretty much immortal.

The reason why I believe immortality is the answer and not super-crazy-fast-lightspeed-engines, is because even if you achieve 1.0c (100% the speed of light), it would take a human 100–180 millenia to travel from one side of the Milky Way to the other. Let alone travelling to another galaxy. That’s about 1000 human generations.

However, if humans are immortal, then such a long journey might feel similar to you as if you take a 12-hour plane flight from London to Tokyo. Long and a bit boring, but compared to your entire life it is not that significant.

Of course, cryonics (freezing a humans body) is another option that could work with this. Or wormhole travel, multiple dimensions or the number 42

Love it!

 

[Man of Ethics]

Whit in the next 500 years we may have a million or more people living off Earth which will be a small fraction of the billions of people living on earth (if we don't destroy our selves first).

Maybe much earlier -- maybe most people will be living away from Earth in 2150.

 

[Fort Fun Indiana]

We're only constrained by our flawed idea that awareness is limited to the Lego blocks of the physical Universe

And how would awareness of something not part of the physical universe work? How would you know you were not hallucinating?

 

[JoeMoma]

Maybe much earlier -- maybe most people will be living away from Earth in 2150.

Maybe....

However, it will be very difficult to create a larger livable environment away form Earth. It is unlikely that "most" people will be living away from Earth unless the environment of Earth is destroyed.

 

[Man of Ethics]

Maybe....

However, it will be very difficult to create a larger livable environment away form Earth. It is unlikely that "most" people will be living away from Earth unless the environment of Earth is destroyed.

Technological progress is exponential.

 

[JoeMoma]

Technological progress is exponential.

Well, I will be long dead before 2150, so I'll never know.

 

[Man of Ethics]

Well, I will be long dead before 2150, so I'll never know.

As I will be. Sad but true.

 

[Stryder50]

Technological progress is exponential.

Only for the past century or so, about two at best. Prior to that has been tens to hundreds of thousands of years of rather so progression, just short of stagnant.

I'd hesitate to expect it will continue to be "exponential", yet won't rule such out.

Thanks for underscoring the lack of correct historical detail and perspective being taught in our current educational systems.

 

[frigidweirdo]

Right, but that would take an awful lot of force, force for which we have no apprent source.

Well, not necessarily. We could, potentially, be in a cyclical universe. All the matter, energy, stuff, whatever gets thrown out at the Big Bang, and then gets pushed around the universe back to the starting point to be repeated again.

 

[frigidweirdo]

In the strict sense of Big Bang Theory, -- the idea that there was a rapid expansion of the universe -- it is pretty much confirmed. We took a picture of it. But the idea of a singularity prior to the Big Bang is up in the air and is actually starting to fall out of favor.

Well, we know certain things, we have evidence for things. The problem is we might just be making the wrong assumptions about the evidence we have. Maybe something missing would completely change our view on what we see.