Interstellar Hydrogen Prevents Light-Speed Travel?

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."'"

Comments

Fuckin' Noobs

[jim_v2000]

That's what the deflector array is for.

Damn it, now they tell me

[verbalcontract]

And I was just about to get into my 99.999998% lightspeed spaceship.

Re:Damn it, now they tell me

[Fnkmaster]

Well, the only material difference is the time dilation factor for the person in the spaceship. At 99.9% the speed of light, that factor is about 22 - i.e. the 4.4 years seems to take only about 0.2 years, or 10 weeks. At 99.999998% of the speed of light, it is almost exactly 5000 - which means the trip would seem to pass in about 7 hours. This is ignoring the general relativistic effects of acceleration and deceleration.

So, it's a material difference to the person traveling, but not so material to the observer stationary relative to Alpha Centauri.

simple solution:

[notgm]

put a hydrogen-atom-splitter on the bow of the ship, they'll just get cut in half and fall out of the way.

Re:simple solution:

[jbeaupre]

You joke, but that might be an actual solution. If you can go that fast, why not postulate some other technology. Something that causes hydrogen to have a 50% probability of being on the left, 50% on the right. Just for a microsecond. Let it collapse back to the middle once you've gone past.

Really you'd want to create some sort of probability donut. Fly right through the middle. I propose calling it the Homer-Schrodinger shield.

Considering the energy required. . .

[Salgak1]

. . .to GET to .99999998 c, this is unlikely to be a concern. And if you have the effectively-infinite energy to move a ship at this speed, providing sufficient shielding should be a trivial exercise in additional hand-wavium. . . .

easy solution

[nomadic]

All you have to do is navigate around the hydrogen atoms.

True, But Irrelevant...

[wintermute3]

I don't think anyone seriously contemplating relativistic or FTL travel expects to be physically accelerated to such speeds. After all, if stationary interstellar hydrogen is effectively hitting you at teravolt levels, it means that every particle in your body (and the ship) has actually been accelerated to velocities equivalent to the particles in the LHC beam. Not bloody likely. We need warp drive, subspace, wormholes, or something else to solve the problem, not ridiculous conventional acceleration.

- Michael

Re:True, But Irrelevant...

[arielCo]

Not bloody likely.

Likely bloody. Very bloody.

Re:Do keep up, dear boy...

[Space cowboy]

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

Re:old news...

[AmigaMMC]

>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

...

Since most of the time the LHC is down that doesn't seem like a big problem :-p

Ok, big fan of the LHC, but just had to say it