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The following article describes the beliefs of StylusEpix.
Faster than light? Yes, it is possible![]
Faster than light travel is possible, Everything is posible if the mankind has that potential to do achieve its aim and goal.... Example: A rocket will never be able to leave the Earth's atmospher ~ New York Times, 1937.... But on July 20, 1969, Neil Armstrong had set his leg on the moon.
But still there are many problems in attaining the speed of light.... Among them the most important is how will we attain the speed?... Hmm Interesting question.... But nothing is impossible as Impossible itself says " I-M-POSSIBLE". The second problem is will the human body be able to withstand the g-force that would act on him????.... The questions regarding tavelling travelling faster than light are infinite but it is not impossible.... Science is making progress each day.... The day is not far ahead when the first spacecraft to travel faster than light will be invented.....
Hold on guys!!!! Maybe you are the one who might invent that spacecraft... You never know.
What FTL Travel Would Mean[]
He who dreams of the promises of sci-fi is comforted by a cute belief: we are but an inevitable breakthrough away from a warp motor or a wormhole tunneling machine; soon, a magical technology will let us jump from star to star, and let us expand a dominion spanning from the confines of our home solar system to the outer reaches of the galaxy.
Indeed, if it were possible to travel or to send information at speeds faster than light, life surely would come to permeate the universe, spreading to every star, every galaxy, every galactic cluster, engineering structures in which the greatest of Dyson spheres would be but a tiny grain of power generating dust.
- Challenge: Very few planets are suitable for life. Also, not all life evolved the same way. Also, life that has evolved similar to our own may not necessarily progress in the direction of manipulative, rational, theoretical ability. Indeed, life must not only progress to the point that beings can manipulate their world and develop complex fields of knowledge, but they must also be willing to explore space. In summary, very few races would meet this requirement, if any. This is similar to the chances of getting the first life form: it's exceptionally rare, but it occurs once.
Why I Do Believe FTL Travel May Be Possible[]
Faster than light travel may currently be impossible by modern technological standards, however, the possibility of civilizations that are thousands or millions of years more advanced than us achieving it may not be so far fetched. Our own notions of what it takes to achieve FTL travel are theoretical at best, as we are still a fairly primitive race. Humanity's technological age is only about 150 years old. Should a civiliation have had thousands of years to advance (upon settling the factionalism, racism and political divisions that may have initially divided them), there may in fact be a possibility to achieve this seemingly impossible feat. Already science has made what was previously thought impossible, possible. Advanced artificial intelligence, the creation of antimatter, and even teleportation while only in their infancy, were considered impossible a few decades ago, yet now we read about them in the latest scientific magazines and view them on television. We now are beginning to enter a new age of scientific mastery that has allowed us to utilize the discoveries of the twentieth century to produce wonderous new technologies for the twenty first. While it may be difficult to conceive the possibility of FTL travel happening in the distant future, to assume that scientific progress will never allow its eventuality is as rediculous and short sighted as Admiral William Leahy sounds today upon stating "The atomic bomb will never go off, and I speak as an expert in explosives". It is always dangerous to state that something is impossible, no matter what time period we may exist in. Many say that it violates the law of physics, and it does, at least our current understanding of physics. We have progress from newtonian mechanics, to einsteins relativity, to the quantum theory and finally into string theory. Who is to say that new discoveries will not allow for greater scientific flexibility. Time travel was once thought to be absurd, a product of science fiction though to remain just that, fiction. Yet we know today that time travel is indeed possible, as it does not violate the known laws of physics. There you have it, a concrete example of science fiction becoming science fact.
If all this is true, and there are civiliations out there with these capabilities, one may ask why we have not made contact yet. Well should a civiliation be so advanced, that they are traversing the galactic space lanes, then why would they waste their time and effort on a civiliation as primitive as humanity's. Are we so arrogant that we assume that they must come to us? We might as well be mere insects to a civilization of their caliber, and what do we do when we see a colony of insects? Do we seek to communicate with them, and learn their ways in a "take me to your leader fashion"? Simply put, no, we can no more understand them, than an ant colony can understand us.
Without FTL Travel[]
A single life form may not be truly incapable of gaining dominion over the resources of a single galaxy; it could do so through sleeper or generation ships, or perhaps post-human consciousnesses carried in artificial vessels, over the course of thousands of centuries, it may cross the 100,000 light year span of our own Milky Way. However, even with such advanced technology, should the life form not master faster than light travel, each star system would remain cut off from the others, the simplest of messages taking countless millenia to transmit from one planet to another.
With FTL Travel[]
One by one, the stars could find themselves surrounded by Dyson spheres or comparable structures. Though I can hardly conceive it, there may yet be wars on a scale far beyond spaceships, involving the energies of entire suns, playing out over millions of years. But I believe, perhaps optimistically, that civilizations with such incredible powers are sure to be beyond petty violence and wanton destruction.
Why We Ponder FTL Travel[]
Earthlings are drawn to supernatural mythologies that provide easy and comforting answers to their unanswerable questions. Even those who reject conventional religions seek spiritual guidance - some find it in sci-fi. Transhumanism provides me with hopes of a nearly eternal life. As for science, it provides me with a cosmology that explains our origins and our future. It is faith that makes those beliefs real to me. When distorted ever so slightly by fiction, those beliefs can easily become as silly as those of gnostic religions. Look at your own cosmological beliefs: where do they come from? Are they realistic?