Tachyon Speed, by Armando Díaz

Fly from Here... - Yes

Tr. Spa-Eng.

 Among all the possible advances that science can provide us, which ones do you think are the most important? In the short term, perhaps we agree that finding a cure against cancer, Alzheimer's, or all infectious diseases, would be the most welcome progresses provided their benefits reach all the world's people.            

 Next, we can agree that it would be highly desirable that the economists gave evidence that Economics is a science, so they will find formulas that allow a sustainable economy, with full employment and free of speculative bubbles. If given the choice, might these formulas be applied in reality it would be superb because, as we would have already eradicated the worst diseases, the population would increase fast, especially for the older, so we need a better diligence in these matters.            

 We can continue speculating as much as we want, and most likely many of those wonders will occur, but for me there is a sublect for which it is essential we find the solution sooner or late: overcome the speed limit of light.        

 In the further long term, it is the only way in which the human species may exist during tens or hundreds of billions of years. Perhaps that should not concern us much now, since the end of our Sun and so that of the Earth, is expected in about five billion years and none of us will be there to see it, but then it doesn't have too much sense to worry about our children or grandchildren. Furthermore, that is also the maximum time limit, nothing prevents that long before that a catastrophe happens which deletes us beforehand, say between tomorrow and a few hundred years: a nuclear war, an irresistible climate change, collision with an asteroid of sufficient size... Add whatever you like.             

 We now have all the eggs in the same basket, and we know that this is always a bad investment. Making interstellar travels become real means just diversifying our investments, the only insurance against an unavoidable accident. And talking about investment, the colonization of space would be by itself the new industry that the world needs to revive its economy. Since years ago, I have thought that if Autarchy does not work for a State or a continent it can neither work for the planet. The Earth is a closed economic system, and since we abandoned hunting and gathering that system has been deeply unequal, with hoarder minorities in front of deprived multitudes. Exploitation of the human and natural resources has been a game without end with increasingly high stakes, in a fight without quarter to conquer markets. Maybe we are reaching the ending. Just opening ourselves to our Galaxy, any conceivable limits to our economic development would disappear though it does not certainly guarantee that it would be better, i.e., fairer and healthier. Well, let's not forget that economists will demonstrate soon that their predictions are above necromancy and foretelling arts.

Prometheus

  The world is not what it was, not in the last ten thousand years. It has been reduced to a small ball where we can move from one point to another within a few hours, increasingly less. Einstein's relativistic equations prohibit to travel faster than light, and in fact even get close to it. It doesn't matter as it would not be useful for us, light is too slow. There is hope, there are solutions to these equations which predict the existence of something called tachyons, particles that always travel faster than light. And quantum mechanics also seems to need to say something about it.

 Perhaps everything is in vain and Einstein is right, but I refuse to accept that it is so. If given the choice to believe in all kinds of inaccessible things to reason, I'd rather trust, (have faith), on the ability of science to overcome barriers, and that there is a good amount of tangible evidence, (so it's easier to have faith, right?). A different thing is to put it in the use that is made of each new discovery, but that is another issue. I don't minf if they are engines powered by antimatter or tachyons jets, hyperspace jumps, quantum teleportation or any other solutions that some not born yet can figure out.

 "Space, the final frontier, where nobody has ever been before, these are the voyages of the spaceship Enterprise...". I will never hear this words outside the cinema or television screens, but if madness does not go through us before, I think that it will come the day when James Tiberius Kirk says them really, for the sake of the children of the children of our children's children.

Take a look at my dear buddy Armando Díaz' knowledge:
eldiazblog.blogspot.com.es