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Interstellar Hydrogen Prevents Light-Speed Travel?

Posted by CmdrTaco on from the einstein-brought-in-backup dept.

garg0yle writes "As if relativity wasn't enough to prevent us traveling at light speed, Professor William Edelstein of the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine is now claiming that the interstellar hydrogen, compressed in front of the ship, would bring the journey to a shocking end. 'As the spaceship reached 99.999998 per cent of the speed of light, "hydrogen atoms would seem to reach a staggering 7 teraelectron volts," which for the crew "would be like standing in front of the Large Hadron Collider beam."'"

1 of 546 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Do keep up, dear boy... by Space+cowboy · · Score: 5, Informative

    Let me recap for you (both of the below points taken from the links I provided...):

    1) Proposed by the physicist Miguel Alcubierre, popularised by Star-Trek.

    2) Proposed by the physicist Robert W Bussard (hence "Bussard Ramjet"), popularised by Larry Niven (the author), and even referred to by Carl Sagan on TV and in books...

    Various other authors have used the same ideas. Perhaps I ought to have mentioned that I'm a physicist too... And the gentle humour regarding tense was supposed to clue you in that I wasn't suggesting we had a practical solution just yet... I wish I'd spelt "two thoughts" correctly, though.

    Simon

    --
    Physicists get Hadrons!