Q&A 29: Are Generational Ships Possible? And more...
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- Опубликовано: 8 авг 2017
- In this week’s QA, Fraser worries about artificial super intelligence, getting flung out of the Milky Way.
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Team: Fraser Cain - @fcain / frasercain@gmail.com
Karla Thompson - @karlaii / / @karlathompson001
Chad Weber - weber.chad@gmail.com
Chloe Cain - Instagram: @chloegwen2001 
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It really sucks that we will be all dead before such great discovers be made in our galaxy
Yup, I always wish I could live in the future to see what happens next.
Fraser Cain Me too!
Yes, but then you'd want to see what the "future" holds for that time and then the next time period. I was born at a time when jet engines were just barely being used on passenger jets. Now, we are talking seriously of sending people to Mars and it might even happen in my lifetime. I can only imagine what I would see if I could live one more lifetime after this one. Of course, I do believe in an afterlife and I believe that I will get to watch what happens here. Time will just pass a lot faster for us then.
Yes, many of us will always long to see what is beyond our days. Although it is interesting to look back at what some prior generations would have seen. Imagine living 100 years, from 1900 to 2000. You would have gone from horse and carriage to automobiles to airplanes to jets to rockets launched into space. You would have gone from slide rules to mechanical calculators, to pocket calculators, to PC's, to laptops, to cell phones. I often wonder if I live 100 years, or close, if there will be as much extreme innovation as there was in that period. A truly fascinating lifespan to have lived. I wish I had known my great grandfather, but he died when I was only 2. He was born in 1898, and died in 1979. A friend of mine's grandmother's second husband was born in 1885 and was an inventor. He was interested in technology at a young age and actually personally witnessed the first deadly airplane crash in history. He has old tapes of the guy talking about his life experiences. He said he knew something was wrong and the guy was going to crash. I just think that is an amazing story.
Personally, I am giving it 50/50 odds that we will still be alive. Live forever or die trying!
theres some really thought provoking scifi shorts stories or animations that are truly worth looking at. just a cruise through them is worth it to all
I may occasionally disagree with you and I learn megabytes from you but in my years of listening to you, you are never, ever, boring! Thank you!
Thanks Larry!
this video is so high quality it looks like real life
I've been watching your videos for ages however I only recently discovered you done a video with my brother Scott Manley, I remember watching the interplanetary spaceship episode however that was prior to my weekly dedication to your channel. Awesome. Love your work
I see all of the better known channels that i follow. Three of my favorite obscure channels that deserve more publicity are:
1) John Michael Godier - He does multi-weekly videos on interesting space-sci topics. I catch his work as fanatically as Issac Arthur's!
2) Parallaxicality - Great content, I only just found him, but top notch! (think space-doc spliced with those Canadian classic "Hinterland Who's Who" nature shorts! Its his voice that bring that to mind. Nearly as soothing, but less monotone...sometimes. LoL )
3) DeepSkyVideos & Sixty Symbols - sister sites. One focuses on messier objects, the other more general astronomical topics. Much less obscure than the 1st 2 tho...
I remember hinterland from my infancy! Just as I remember the shuttle. i was born 2 weeks before the 1st flight...give these a serious look Fraser!
cheers!
Thanks for the suggestion of John Michael Godier, I'm really enjoying his channel.
Option #1 makes me sleepy and I have to drink two cups of coffee to get through his videos. But in addition to Sixty Symbols I would recommend another sister channel, Periodic Videos. Another good one Harran does is Objectify where he digs around the Royal Society's collection for artifacts like Newton's original telescope.
Super big fan of: PBS Space Time, Smarter Everyday (Not a small following), Deep Sky Videos, Sixty Symbols. Love your channel, keep up the amazing work!
Great suggestions, thanks!
Sciencephile the A.I. is my current fave science channel
That railroad analogy for acceleration laser routes is perfect. I'm stealing that. ;O)-
Awesome, let me know what you do with it. :-)
The Goat I want it too xD
Its great, but its been done, to farcical effect in futurama. LoL
The ''space train'' used a prism as a switch to split the track & send carriages on different colours! It was awesome!
But I agree with the concepts importance...cant wait!
Have you seen Person of Interest? Highly recommend it!
I have. They did a great job dealing with the threat of a AI.
I have to say that I love your channel, it was one of the first that I subbed to. I have to ask, what originally inspired you to reach out and start your channel in the first place?
I've been a space journalist for almost 20 years now, and I started doing the Astronomy Cast podcast about 10 years ago. Doing video has always fascinated me, and I knew it was the future of science communication so I just kind of forced myself to start figuring it out. If you go back to the beginning, you can see us learning how to make these videos. :-)
Whatever you do, do not pause the video at 1:43... I had a phone call, returned and Fraser spooked me... :) Love you man.
I've paused it at 1:43 and I'm seeing a still shot of Fraser talking. What am I looking for?
Tony Darnell of SpacefanNews. Been following his Deep Astronomy and the aforementioned channel for 4 years. Excellent narrator.
Thanks for the Nebula answer - I always wondered how "thick" they would be. I always assumed they would be near-invisible from inside, unlike as shown in Star Trek.
Yup, the Orion Nebula would never look any better than it does right now. ruclips.net/video/_9NMXy1FKPA/видео.html
Fraser Cain Hah! I missed that video of yours. That is perfect! Love the "meat camera" bit.
"Meat cameras" awesome!
I'm willing to bet that our solar system being flung out of the galaxy would be devastating to us. I think that our solar system's relationship to nearby solar systems and the galaxy as a whole hasn't been fully realized by us yet.
What do you think would happen?
Hey Fraser, as for other excellent channels - Dreksler is awesome and conducts all sorts of interesting thought experiments... I could only imagine what the two of you folks would come up with.
Love vsauce, PBS space time, curious droid, dreksler, and you 😄
Cool... and you can use laser relays also as internet antennas for the solar wide web!...
I suggest Pbs Spacetime, link4universe and Curiuss and Curious Droid. Ciao!
Yup, they can provide transportation and communications.
I would like a show on moon base manufacturing facilities and a Mars mission launched from there!! Mining and manufacturing launching space craft from the moon
I really want to do an episode all about what it would take to get a base on the Moon. I'll count this as another vote.
Laser transit system sounds cool, when we build the lunar base we should use that for the supply line, to research and perfect the method before getting started on using laser for system and interstellar propulsion :)
Mate I had no idea about that "galactic magnetosphere" that's insane! Can you tell us more about it? How is it formed? What does it protect us from??
Space with Sarah and Socratica are great channels with modest followings, both do a great job breaking down complex ideas for the everyday person.
Did you see that I did a collaboration with Sarah? I'll probably be doing another soon: ruclips.net/video/knw10ooUCK4/видео.html
indeed. That was actually how I found her channel. I was just spreading the word for those that might not have seen the episode. Socratica delivers their content in a very similar style to sarah. They also cover many other subjects, including computer science and videos on how to prep for tests and exams.
Lol, Isaac Arthur, Vintage Space, Scott Manley... Subscribed to all of them. Maybe you guys should one day form a RUclips space community alliance or something.
Isaac Arthur Rocks!!!
Some folks I follow: John Micheal Godier, Julian Danzer and TMRO.
Thanks for the videos!
deep sky videos and really everything brady makes
Great suggestions. :-)
Since ftl with the albecurrie drive is so controversial, is it still possible to use it for very efficient slower-than-light travel?
Science Asylum is definately a channel that needs more subs. right now it's only at 17k. he goes fairly in depth into the math and other things, the humour and quality of the videos is pretty well done too.
correction:
The Science Asylum is the name of the channel. i for the "the" part. : ]
Hello Mr Cain. love the vids, especially the question and answer ones. I know you are a big fan of these too.
I myself make a few youtube vids for a game I play, more recently with dialogue. It takes me ages and many takes to put together just a 2 or 3 min vid, and I am only recording my voice! So as I sit here and watch another 17 min vid from you (with the mandatory quick out-take at the end) I am wondering:... just how long does it take you to make these videos? you and your wife must either be extremely proficient or have endless patience.
Thanks a lot! I typically do the QA episodes off the top of my head and in one take. I occasionally give an answer I don't like and redo it, but mostly you're just seeing my stream of consciousness. For the regular episodes, they're prewritten scripts and I'm reading from a teleprompter. I make a few mistakes on those but we go back and redo a few paragraphs for easier editing.
So a total pro then :D keep up the great work!
I liked the idea of using a laser to push sails ahead of a ship to act as a shield vs dust etc while travelling at dangerous speeds(Not as a source of propulsion, just as protection.)
What do we know about the magnetospheres of exoplanets and their importance for habitability of exoplanets?
Question: If you had international support and unlimited funding how would your order your space program Fraser? Lunar base first? Multiple orbitals at various moons? Near-earth asteroid mining? Artificial Gravity in LEO? Obviously you can have simultaneous robotic missions as well as human. The sky is obviously not the limit ;) I know your previous series with Issac had lots of ideas but I'm curious.
Alistair Reynolds' lighthugger ships use some kind of ice shield to protect from interstellar dust.
Hey Fraser, how do you think the development of nanotechnology and genetic manipulation effect space exploration?
Your idea of the laser grid. Are you expecting them to be free floating or on planets, moons, generic big rocks? For the Jupiter and beyond area where solar is so meek what kind of power were you thinking?
Q&A: Hi Fraser.
When a gravity wave pases through an object, does it influence objects and interactions at the microscale? Or: If we would've been close to a black hole merger and the large amplitude gravity wave would pass through the Earth (not sure about the attainable magnitudes), would there be any damage? Some tidal forces? Just to clarify, I don't mean the havoc it'd wreak on the orbits, just the impact on material objects.
I know the gravity is not important at the microscale, but are there some works on it digestable to a non-astrophysicist?
Jiří
What is your opinion of Erik Verlinde's emergent gravity theory?
Why our solar system and assuming other star systems have the orbital bodies spining in a same orbit plane around the sun and not in a random directions? For example Pluto does not align together with other orbital bodies, it's tilted (over 17°). Why?
The most plausible ftl drive and what's keeping us from having it
There are many moons around Uranus and Neptune that need to be explored, and do you think tidal heating could make some of the moons habitable?
What about Seed ships like Distance songs of Earth?
How long would it take us to accelerate to light speed without passing out?
So are all the stars we see with the naked eye in the night sky in the milkyway?
Hey #FraserCain I love your videos. Question : You talk a lot about the way to travel in our solar system, laser "railway", but what about the communication and how to sync those laser railway ?
The laser relay could work for communications too. It would do double duty. :-)
SciShow Space is kinda obvious, but regarding futurism i only know you & Arthur.
a great youtube channel is TMRO all space related.
I guess that settles the debate on whether he's really in the woods.
One other one… If you entangled 2 particles, and then you put one on a spaceship that then accelerated away at relativistic speeds, if you then change one particle, would the other change at the exact same time even though it's clock is moving at a significantly different time rate? Would the particle on the ship also still be able to be effected even if the careless ship captain accidentally fell below the event horizon of a blackhole?
I was expecting the whole time (in two occasions actually) that you would also bring up the "Seeding Ships" that would bring fertilized eggs (or genetic assembly instructions) to other planets to make the first generation "hatch" in artificial wombs like in "Songs Of Distant Earth". ^_^
Hi Fraser, I am curious as to what the tolerances are for Earth's magnetosphere. In common illustrations you often see compression and resizing based on solar activity. Can a strong solar storm collapse the field outright? Will it recover quickly? will that put our atmosphere at risk in the short term?
It can't collapse it completely, just deform it and change it. The next episode is all about the Van Allen Belts, so stay tuned.
Got question about traveling speed of light. As I understand it.. there's no way to Kno speed move thru space itself... Only speed relitive to other objects.. so two objects moving in opsite directions limited to ha!ve speed of light?
Although very abstract, what are your thoughts on how to survive the ultimate fate of the universe for example, heat death. Of course it seems astronomically unlikely if not impossible but I'm just looking for thoughts. :)
@ Fraser Q&A: if I build a space port on mercury, could I take advantage of the hohmann transfer and Mercury's orbit length to access all the other bodies in the solar system faster than my competitors on earth?
Could you do a video on chandrashekhar limit
Sure, we actually talked a bit about it in this video: ruclips.net/video/RZKiWGT4Za4/видео.html
What's your opinion on the 9th planet myth: Nemesis?
It's a hoax.
Ridddle is a good channel about these types of things too
Great suggestion on Ridddle, thanks!
i hope the nazis from the dark side of the moon kidnap you for forcing me to read a notification :,( oh and they have the same channel in russian with the same name but with even more videos
how fast and in which direction do you have to go to be static towards the cmb (so no (or the same) redshift in any direction)
Which part of the CMB? It's in all directions.
towards all directions so so every direction is redshifted equally
i think in the pictures of the cmb the redshift thats caused by the earths motion through space is already calculated out
i wanna know that number and direction maybe in reference to our galaxy :p
Whatever happened to the EM Drive?
Are there any stars or even solar systems that have been discovered that float between the galaxies - basically that are not a part of a galaxy?
Q #1, see Max Tegmark as well.
When something reaches the event horizon of a black hole, it is only capable of moving closer to a black hole and can never reverse. Doesn't this create a logical error preventing black holes from merging? When the horizons first touch doesn't that mean spacetime flows one way in two mutually opposite directions?
Layer the spaceship's windows with clear displays, then display the false color image of the top. Augmented reality ftw. ;)
First thanks for the recommendation to visit the canyon. We had a nice half day in Vancouver hitting the canyon and Stanley Park.
With NASA announcing the plan to redirect Didymos B with the DART project. How close should an asteroid be coming towards earth before we should be concerned? I hear of asteroids coming "close" but the distance always seem pretty far away. For example "2010 NY65. Calculations predict it will come within 1.9 million miles of us this time around, a cat’s whisker in astronomical terms"
I'm glad you enjoyed Vancouver. :-) Once the new asteroid surveys have been completed, we'll have a much more comprehensive understanding of what's out there. I'll bet we'll find many many more objects of "concern". 1.9 million miles is nothing. Way beyond the orbit of the Moon.
Why in your opinion aren't significantly more assets poured into Fusion power research?
I want to be an astronomer to assist in finding life In the universe, what steps should I take and is it flawed idea?
Very interesting and informative video. I seem to have been preempted on channels so I will pose a question. Given the science knowledge we take for granted today was over about the past couple of hundred years was science fiction, is it not at least theoretically possible that what is considered impossible today, ie faster than light speed travel (which seems popular) be possible within the next couple of hundred years be a possibility?
Of course it's possible, but we don't know which things will be possible. We always have to speculate based on the laws of physics as we currently understand them, and modify our future based on new discoveries.
Fraser Cain Thank you for your reply and I do see the logic. It is always theoretical until new discoveries indicate otherwise.
Do we have any idea why particles with no mass (i.e. Photons) are compelled to move at the speed of light/causality? If so, what insight does that give us about the nature of our universe?
Im actually designing a habitat for a lunar mining colony for my thesis in B.arch design. The expanse is inevitable! And its coming
That's fantastic, let me know when you're done, maybe we can do an episode on lunar colonies.
How do scientists know Proxima Centauri is the closest star?Have they looked at all the stars in every direction in space, or is there possibly others closerthat they haven't found?
What would you add to a new Voyager golden record?
Hey Fraser, here is a hypothetical scenario. Matter transmition ala Star Trek's transporters could be used to travel at the speed of light. We could send out automated relay stations to receive and boost the signals effectively "beaming" people and resources over interstellar distances. Of course this would take hundreds or thousands of years to initially set up, but once it is operational travel would be at light speed. What are your thoughts on this?
did you ever watch Cowboy Bebop? know the 'rings of time and space' that they use in their universe to colonize the solar system?
there's any way to replicate this? or just the concept of space exploration by some kind of 'roads'? like, we just need to go to places at sublight speed only one time.
PBS Space Time, Matt O'Dowd is awesome.
Agreed!
I agree that there are major ethical concerns with generational ships. And not just the fuzzy philosophical stuff, but I feel like, given human nature, that is doomed to fail. Imagine being born in the second generation. What percentage of that generation would grow up and realize "This is kind of f%&^ed up!" and refuse to carry on the traditional / mission. Every generation you'd have a percentage who would lose their minds. Eventually the generations would get smaller and smaller and the whole micro-society would collapse. Either because of a shrinking genetic pool, sociological instability, or just a dying population. I think that our species will master living in our own solar system, send robots to other stars (possibly seed them with life), and, when all the planets are harvested for materials, and there is little left to do in our star system, we will settle into our Matrioshka Brain and live out the rest of the universe in a virtual dreamstate.
Yeah, I should have addressed the idea of just sending robots with life seeding capabilities on board. Frozen lifeforms that could jumpstart future ecosystems.
I like Dreksler's short space videos here on RUclips, and Sciencephile the AI's vids are pretty funny, with an albeit dark / pessimistic sense of humor. Oh, and John Michael Godier's vids are quite good and thoughtful, with frequent updates on phenomena like Tabby's Star and such.
I feel like any civilization seriously considering generation ships will already also have access to radical life extension technology. The latter will render the former obsolete.
Well, it will work on the same principle, but it won't be a generational ship. Just a ship.
So you talked about space travel and how do we need to develop a ship that can withstand the damages sustained from Interstellar space dust. Could we accomplish this with an electromagnetic field around the spacecraft using electromagnets?
We talk about this idea here: ruclips.net/video/pjFTke8E1jA/видео.html
space Engineers (SE) is set about 80 years in the future and has technology from jump drives with a 200km range (for balance), ion engines capable of producing 3.6MN of thrust while only being the size of a room. self replicating machines, and artificial gravity
Although some of those were added for convenience and dealing with the limits of the game engine. Ion drives in SE are way more powerful than should be possible for the energy input and their fuel is abstracted. RL ions are throwing mass out the back of the ship even if they are sipping fuel compaired to conventional rockets. SE ones they dont bother with fuel just the electricity(although the hydrogen thrusters are more like traditional rockets). They were made that powerful for game balance because who would want to spend a week accelerating their mining ship to reach that asteroid orbiting 1km away from where you started.
Artificial gravity in SE runs on magic space pixy dust, they just wanted a way for players to walk around on ships. The engine isnt optimized for handling spin gravity and originally there were no planets or magnetic boots. the fact that you can setup gravity drives with the things, literaly hauling yourself up by your bootstraps violates so many laws of physics it isnt funny :P
The jumpdrives same reason as the OP ions. they are just a convenience thing for traveling long distances quickly. Agian this was mostly to get around game engine limitations. They had to have a speed cap to keep things from breaking too badly. Instead of allowing players to reach relative speeds of 100's of KM/s and breaking the physics engine they added jump drives. Coasting at the default speed cap its around half an hour to travel 200km.
Most of the rest of SE tech is fairly reasonable if you accept that the nity gritty bits are abstracted. IRL your not going to assemble an LCD just by shoving the components in a pile and pointing a welder at it for a minute but it makes sense from a game play standpoint. You've got your reactors and solar panels for power, you've got refinery and assemblers (3d printer) for making components for what you want to build. You've got tanks for O2 and H2 to use as needed. Some of the stuff is more advanced than today's tech but not so much that we couldn't expect to have it in a century. Really only the jumpdrive, gravity gen, and the OP thrusters are improbable.
I have 2 questions to ask-1)Can a quasi star from nowadays in case there is a large amount of hydrogen somewhere in one region?-2)When an electroweak/quark star will somehow crush in our sun will it become an Torn-Zhitkov Object or they are just gonna explode
Generally you need some kind of event to collapse the hydrogen cloud in on itself, just a supernova shockwave. We did an episode on quark stars. The next step is black holes: ruclips.net/video/HLKco7pC4qI/видео.html
Fraser Cain Yeah I know cause I watched this video when it just got uploaded(Btw you're doing some great videos tbh,keep it up).But what if this neutron star somehow can dig a way to the sun core will it remain living there since it's theoretically possible ?
If the majority of mass in a galaxy is dark matter than are black holes primarily made out of the stuff?
Wonder if it has implications in the formation of stars or other phenomena's we haven't figured out yet.
I believe that if we have the ability to build a light speed starship, we would also be able to create technology to make nebulas look all colorful like in Hubble pictures while looking through said starships viewports
Could inflation have been from the annihilation of matter and anti matter
Astro Focus!
Great channel, we actually had them answer a QA question a few episodes ago.
Hi Fraser, I was wondering what would the other plants look like if they swapped places with Earth? Especially The ice giants, would they have land masses like Earth?
No, they're made of gas and ices, so they wouldn't have a solid landmass.
If you were in charge of a space agency, what 5 projects would you most like to do?
A capabilities-driven human space program, a lander for Europa, a space telescope capable of detecting extrasolar life, an asteroid redirection mission, and a rotating space station.
Is it possible an antimatter universe could exist in the opposite direction of time from us, backwards from the big bang?
What do you think about the Great Attractor?
Anton Petrov, nice channel about space with the universe sandbox and other video games
Since breaking the speed of light is impossible, is it possible for us to travel at the speed of light? Not close to it, but the speed of light itself. Maybe something similar to a warp drive?
If we could go faster then light, how much faster then light would be possible? Or would that be infinite?
Does anyone know: If Earth's atmosphere were opaque, would it appear larger from space or does scattering reveal the atmosphere's boundaries equally well ?
Is it feasible that we we made by someone's/ somethings intelligent design?
AI and Automation are both going to radically change the world. Part of the reason I started my homestead was to learn the skills (and then teach them to my daughter) to be as self-sufficient as possible and to be ready as possible for the radical change. Even if this change is ultimately a good thing (e.g. post-scarcity Star Trek awesomeness) there will be a chaotic and painful transition period.
I think self-sufficiency is worth investigating, but I also think part of the magic of human society is that we can specialize, take advantage of trade, automation, etc. I just spent 4 days hiking in the Canadian wilderness, and spending an hour a day to collect and purify our own water got really old. :-)
Great point! And, I do agree. I dream of a world where we each work to improve society by playing the part we can given the skills, knowledge, and passions that we have. If every single one of us, every single day, had to do everything, we wouldn't get much of anywhere. My comment was meant specifically in the context of sudden, extreme change where the exchange of our specialized skills / products might be disrupted. :)
I would prefer to be ruled by an artificial super intelligent mind than by politicians and corporations.
For other space or physics related channels, I like MinutePhysics, Kurzgesagt and PBS SpaceTime. Scott Manley is also good - the guy who asked about games might enjoy Scott's channel because he does a lot of that kind of thing. Vintage Space is good if you're interested in the history of space flight.
Do all galaxies spin the same way?
Nope, they're totally random.
MarineIguana this is interesting; is there a handedness to the spin of galaxies? I would guess no, but what if there was some sort of preference for clockwise? And it would depend on our perspective, too.
Clockwise and Anticlockwise don't really exist in space. It's all about perspective. Which side of the galaxy are you looking at?
Of the perspective of the North and South pole, of course! And by extension, the ecliptic.
Do all Stars rotate a galexy in the same direction.
The dangerous thing about AI is not AI itself, but the ignorance of the regular person on the dangers of AI.
Well said.
But what if we put the people in cryobeds in the generation ships. That way we have to use less energy
How fast is gravity?