Shulou(Shulou.com)11/24 Report--

This article comes from the official account of Wechat: SF Chinese (ID:kexuejiaodian), author: SF

Introduction

Is it possible to travel through the universe like Baby Yoda and his buddies in The Mandalorian? A physicist will explain the problem.

/ Stephen Kelly (Stephen Kelly)

Compile / Wen Jing

Hyperspace travel is the ability to travel at the speed of light on a spaceship and is an integral part of the The Star Wars universe.

Imagine that if Yoda Baby and Mando (the characters in the Star Wars series) had to wait 6,000 years to fly from one planet to another, the new series of Mandalorians (Star Wars spin-offs) will be a very different show.

Photo Source: pixabay this is really a question worth thinking about, that is, how feasible the technology of hyperspace travel is. Can we travel through space without the efforts of generations of astronauts? Or are we stuck in the corners of the Milky way?

Once beyond the speed of light, causality begins to unravel to answer that question, Professor Patrick Johnson, author of Star Wars Physics (The Physics Of Star Wars), needs to figure out what hyperspace travel really is.

"it would be unreasonable if we were to achieve the same speed as or faster than the speed of light as in Star Wars," he said. "

"the speed of light is the speed limit of the universe. once your speed exceeds the speed of light, causality begins to disintegrate. You can easily see an event five light-years away, approach it at a speed faster than light, and get there before it happens. it's basically time travel."

Johnson said that unlike the spacecraft that accelerated at the speed of light in Star Wars, a more realistic option is hyperdrive technology, so that we can create a wormhole to travel from one point in space to another.

Photo: pixabay he said: "it's like folding a piece of paper and punching holes in it so that ants can reach the other side." .

This could explain why in some hyperspace sequences in Star Wars, those ships appear to be going through a blue tunnel.

Of course, there are other scenes, such as Vice Admiral Holdo driving one ship through another at the speed of light in "the Last Jedi" ("Star Wars" spin-off), inspiring supporters of acceleration theory.

Within a reasonable amount of time, the best option is solar sail technology. Johnson says the problem with making wormholes is that they are more theoretical than practical, and no one knows what to do. "it might be easier to find a pre-existing wormhole, and only hope it leads to where you want to go," he said. "

"as for creating a wormhole, it takes decades of manpower before we determine how to locate a particular location."

Johnson also insisted that any wormhole made must be far away from the earth.

"going back to the origami analogy, if the ant happens to be right where the pencil passes through, it will come to a bad end. we need an empty, unoccupied space, coupled with unimaginably complex calculations and, by some definition, the latest star map to ensure that the planet we are going to is in the right place."

At this stage, neither of these options seems likely, which means that we will all be trapped in the solar system for the foreseeable future.

But Johnson hopes that even if we can't accelerate at the speed of light, we can develop long-distance travel across the Milky way.

"without FTL thrusters, I think the best choice for us to get far away in a reasonable time is solar sail technology," he said. "

Photo source: pixabay "these ships operate like sails, but they actually use light from stars to provide unlimited fuel supply for the ship and propel the ship forward. At first, the acceleration is very small, but 10 years later, it will be about 20% of the speed of light, which is ideal."

Interstellar travel is promising-but we can't book a vacation to Tatooine yet.

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