Addresses in the Universe
I am out of my league here. This isn’t a writing that professes in any way, shape or form to know what I am actually talking about. I don’t know the maths, I don’t know the physics involved to give anywhere near a complete and intelligent answer to the questions I propose. What I am doing is providing my observations and questions (and maybe an idea or two that hasn’t yet been touched on in the media I’ve studied) from the abundance of documents/books I’ve read and documentaries I’ve watched. I am also relieving myself of this burden that’s been in my head for weeks now. Thinking and rethinking the possibilities and problems. By writing this all down (and doing so on my blog was just a way to keep track of it in the future for my own use), I am able to get a better idea of where I am heading with this.
To get back on track, here’s a list of things that I am currently taking as truths, if you don’t already know these things, I suggest you looked into it more deeply AND you’re not the target for this paper:
- E=MC^2 (This “general” relativity equation gives us a few things, such as:)
- Note the term “relative”, this matters when discussing….
- Time and Space are directly tied together, henceforth stated as “Space-Time”. Everything is relative to their respective “times” because:
- Time isn’t a constant across the universe. Because of what E=MC^2 posits, it’s impossible to have the same “time” in all locations of the universe, in fact, time actually tallies itself differently on Earth, which has been proven through the use of experiments at different altitudes.
- Einstein’s general theory of relatively opened up a multitude of other avenues (and questions) to explore, and answer (at some point) creating a stir after it’s original introduction to the world, including….
- Schwarzschild’s Singularity, which eventually led to the discussion of….
- Black Holes, which were later proven by Hawking and Penrose.
- Einstein’s “Special” relativity.
- Mass bends light.
- (There’s lots more to add here, I am just including the three above for the purpose of getting started with this thought process)
The three items above will lend a little background to a couple of things I want to present, but first, I want to mention a piece of science-fiction, to which we all know the creators of science-fiction typically base some of their work on science-fact.
Stargate and their addressing system. Yes, the movie that brought us the television shows. Why won’t it work (as explained in the show)? Because of the first three things above. While using some of the work of Einstein and the general theory of relativity to make it more believable for us, digging deeper into astrophysics, there must be a must broader explanation than what the audience was given. If you recall the “ah ha!” moment from the movie, Dr. Daniel Jackson (James Spader) describes the method to find a location to a given place (in space) and that it takes six points of origin, plus to travel to that location, you need a seventh point, the starting location of your voyage. Based on Einstein’s, Schwarzschild’s, Penrose and Hawking’s (among many, many others) work, we know that to be false. Why? Because we must also calculate where that object is traveling (leading the target). Now, let’s give a little leeway to the writers on this one, they’re technically NOT giving exact coordinates for the destination or starting point, they’re representing where the destination is by symbol, without giving the audience the exact location (assuming the gates can do the calculations perhaps). My point is this:
Through the theory of general relativity, and the subsequent theories that are derived from it, we know that mass bends light and therefore, anything we observe in the universe has the potential to have a different set of coordinates because of the effects of space-time by mass and gravity. Also, because of the time that has passed since that light was produced (billions of years) and the constant shifting of objects, that particular object has moved locations in the universe since that light was originally produced. Not only is it in a different location than what we observe, the changes to the new location would need to be calculated based on all objects that have an effect on the light being bent a number of times over the billions of years it’s taken to arrive at our location. In other words, *IF* it were possible today to physically move in the known universe from point A to point B (that are separated by billions of miles) almost instantly, if one were simply to take locations at face value, ie. “planet 1 of star system X is located at coordinates XYX….”, if we pulled the trigger and in a blink of an eye arrive at planet 1, it would no longer be there, in fact, it would have traveled a vast distance away from where we witnessed it from Earth. What’s more, we would need to differentiate which objects could possibly cause a shift of light over that vast distance, which increases the potential objects exponentially, which at this point in our technological evolution (based on my extensive experience with computer technology) I would have to guess that it’s currently impossible to simulate everything involved to calculate all of the movements. NOTE: I must give credit to some of our science fiction writers who undoubtedly thought of something similar to this because if you pay attention during some of their operations on their flight decks, they actually use the phrase “make calculations for jumping to _______”.
Now, I know I can’t be the only person that’s come up with this. After listening to an abundance of podcasts with Neil deGrasse-Tyson, Michio Kaku, reading docs, books and watching documentaries, no one has really mentioned this and I want to know more. I have seen some similar questions being asked online, with almost cookie-cutter responses (to some degree), but not as precisely as I would have liked. Even when the questions are asked, many times the enormity is left out of either the question or the answer.
We can take into consideration “leading the target”, whereby we observe the star on Date X and then later measure it after a given amount of time on Date Y, use that to estimate the travel to that distant system, point and shoot. It’s still a guess. Why? Again, we fall back to 1-3 above. Not only do these large mass objects have an effect on the light traveling TO us, they also have an effect on us and our equipment traveling toward our destination. Below, you will see the idea of shorter initial distance calculations, which would lessen the “leading the target” variances.
Our culture doesn’t like to use the phrase, “….it’s impossible to figure out.” I don’t like using that phrase for perhaps a different set of reasons, which primarily revolve around, “….I may be smart, but I know there’s a ton of more intelligent people in the world than I.” And hope that someone like Neil and Michio have the abilities to see through this problem and come to a resolution. To travel there? Well, we need to start somewhere and frankly, because the technology isn’t there to create the drive system to make it happen, the very least we can do is to try and come up with the methodology to navigate the way for when the transportation is available, I mean, math can happen well in advance of new technology, such as faster-than-light propulsion, in this case, we have enough info to get started on the nav.
Quantum computers could resolve this issue. If they’re everything they’re cracked up to be, this might be a great simulation to begin developing to see how they handle the calculations needed to make the leap.
Even if we came up with a method to develop an artificial worm hole, we would still need to come up with the destination address in which to punch in to the worm hole creation device.
Now, one way around this would be to calculate shorter waypoints from Point A to Point B, making a series of jumps from the closest star to the next, along our route (Waypoint A.1, A.2, A.3, etc. until you reach Point B). This would cut the initial calculation time down significantly by eliminating a vast number of objects that could not effect each individual (and smaller) leg of the journey, which may be the easiest way (for now) to make it happen. The end destination would not be known until we nearly reach the end of the journey. Such is the way of human kind. We didn’t know how to get the west coast until Lewis and Clark made the final choice of routes over the Sierra Nevada Range. Hard to imagine though, using the basis of the same type of exploration-navigation to get to a distant star system that Lewis and Clark used to get from the east coast of the United States to the west coast, one leg at a time. Even then, the onboard computer system would have to have other abilities, such as the ability to see the universe between the current location of our transport and the final destination, understand where that location is in relation to the end destination, in order to make the calculations for the next leg.
Shew. That’s a lot to think about. Why do I think of this stuff? I have no idea. But like I said above, I had to write it down – have an outlet, otherwise, I think it may have driven me half a bubble off level.