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May 17, 2007 Periodically I glimpse, on Internet or elsewhere, elated reports from one or another university or observatory to the effect that a planet with such-and-such properties has been discovered at a distance of "only" 20 or 50 light-years from terra firma. Or I may see that someone has exclaimed his delight in estimating that there are at least 500 habitable planets in the "local" galaxy, many less than a "mere" 100 light-years away, When this happens, I know that I'll soon be passing a newsstand in which the cover of National Geographic-yes, it's available in South America-has a very realistic-looking picture of a sunrise on that planet. Almost at your fingertips! Of course, science-fiction enthusiasts immediately shift into imaginary high-gear and start talking about the imminent attainment of speeds like .2c or .5c, jabbering as glibly and excitedly as auto-racing enthusiasts when they talk about 200 or 250 miles per hour. "If we can get up to just 10% of the speed of light, hell, we'll make 20 light-years in only 200 years, so all we have to do is put somebody in suspended animation, and, presto, we're there." A whole congeries of science-fiction writers have made shameless bundles of money disseminating these silly ideas. But, if the truth be told, stellar flights are just not going to happen, at least in the lifetime of anyone now living on the planet. We're thousands of years away from any technology of the kind, if, indeed, such technology is possible at all. Now Voyager I cruised at a velocity of 61,200 kilometers per hour, while light moves at a velocity of 1,080,000,000 kilometers per hour, that, is, 17,650 times as fast. So if a star is "only" 20 light-years away, it would have taken Voyager I "only" 353,000 years to get there. To the average science-fiction enthusiast this is no problem. He has all sorts of new propulsion systems, new propellants, new topologies of space all waiting in the back of his mind. Just tell him that there's a habitable planet in the Lesser Magellanic Cloud, and he's there already, with the speed of thought. And Nacional Geographic and the other magazines earn a few dollars in the meantime. Even the nearest star is 70,000 years away for Voyager I, and if ? Centauri has a planet at all, the probability that it is earthling-friendly is undoubtedly somewhere in the range of 1 in 1,000,000 or less. If you drew a sphere around the earth with a radius of 50,000 light-years, it would probably include half a dozen habitable planets. The likelihood of finding one of the planets would be something like finding a particular speck of dust with no more precise clue than that it was in Asia. So, unless the latest series of spaceflights in the solar system turns up something useful to the human race, with the chances of it being vanishingly small, there's no point even thinking about the conquest of space. The solution to humanity's problems, if there is a solution, will have to come from the immediate environs of planet Earth. ------------ About the author Thomas Keyes: I have written two books: A SOJOURN IN ASIA (non-fiction) and A TALE OF UNG (fiction), neither published so far. I have studied languages for years and traveled extensively on five continents. Email: udikeyes@yahoo.com Comment on this article here! ------------ All articles are EXCLUSIVE to Useless-Knowledge.com and are not allowed to be posted on other websites. ARTICLE THIEVES WILL BE PROSECUTED! |
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