FTL travel is a fictional concept. It is a really useful fictional concept because it lets characters outside of each other’s light cones interact, but involves ignoring the laws of physics as we know them. So, if we are to have FTL travel, that’s fine, but we can’t really discuss the engineering aspects of CRT vs LCD if we don’t know how to you’ve bent the laws of physics.
If we suppose FTl travel is possible, 1 and 2 don’t really apply, the colonists can instead just get resupplies from Earth. In fact it will be very convenient, because FTL travel allows the traveler to go back in time, your spare monitor will arrive before you order it. The only downside is the sense of impending doom if you suddenly get a large shipment of splints and bandages from Earth.
3 seems unlikely to matter, humans are bad at quick precise movements compared to machines. By the time space colonization is possible, the (as RTS players would call it) “micro” at least of space combat will be handled by AIs. This seems independent of FTL, although we don’t know what the side effects of allowing FTL signal propagation inside a CPU could be. Really good branch prediction I guess, if we can just send a “which way did it go” bit back in time.
4 relies on point 0 I guess so we can toss that out.
5, if we’re moving humans we’ll have to come up with shielding anyway.
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If we don’t suppose FTL travel, then I think a colony will inherently need to include somehow the ability to make advanced computers.
There’s no practical way of returning resources from a space colony many light years from Earth. So, the colonists must be heading out there in their own self interest. Nobody is going to pay you to mine rocks on Alpha Centauri if it takes years to get anything back, you must have set out because you are interested in living there. So, the quality of life must not be much, much worse than Earth. Fairly up to date manufacturing will be table stakes for most colonists I think.
People regularly say this, and I've yet to find a convincing argument for it.
The "backwards time travel" argument presupposes that an object is actually moving through space at a speed faster than light - i.e. with an imaginary Lorentz factor (1/sqrt(1-(v^2/c^2))) and all the shenanigans that entails. That presupposition ignores hypothetical approaches like wormholes and Alcubierre drives that outright shorten the distance to be traversed and thus don't entail actually moving at such speeds (and therefore keeping the Lorentz factor right around its normal happy 1).
Put differently: such an argument presupposes that a light cone is actually cone-shaped, whereas wormholes and Alcubierre drives throw a wrench in that, producing all sorts of lumpiness that keeps events within the same (really weird looking) light cone despite taking place at long distances.
because FTL travel allows the traveler to go back in time
I'm actually curious, has FTL ever been observed in reality, even for just individual particles? My personal belief is that backwards time travel is impossible because the universe changes in-place, but I haven't actually done any research on the subject so I could be totally wrong.
Information has not been observed to travel faster than light. What I mean by “FTL travel allows the traveler to go back in time” is, if one were to abuse the equations to get a traveler that is moving faster than light, some times would also end up looking negative.
But these are nonsense quantities that come about from abusing the equations, I mention it not because I think it is a practical concern but to highlight that we can’t just say “assuming FTL” without also being charged with ancillary crimes against the laws of physics!
Comments
FTL travel is a fictional concept. It is a really useful fictional concept because it lets characters outside of each other’s light cones interact, but involves ignoring the laws of physics as we know them. So, if we are to have FTL travel, that’s fine, but we can’t really discuss the engineering aspects of CRT vs LCD if we don’t know how to you’ve bent the laws of physics.
If we suppose FTl travel is possible, 1 and 2 don’t really apply, the colonists can instead just get resupplies from Earth. In fact it will be very convenient, because FTL travel allows the traveler to go back in time, your spare monitor will arrive before you order it. The only downside is the sense of impending doom if you suddenly get a large shipment of splints and bandages from Earth.
3 seems unlikely to matter, humans are bad at quick precise movements compared to machines. By the time space colonization is possible, the (as RTS players would call it) “micro” at least of space combat will be handled by AIs. This seems independent of FTL, although we don’t know what the side effects of allowing FTL signal propagation inside a CPU could be. Really good branch prediction I guess, if we can just send a “which way did it go” bit back in time.
4 relies on point 0 I guess so we can toss that out.
5, if we’re moving humans we’ll have to come up with shielding anyway.
—-
If we don’t suppose FTL travel, then I think a colony will inherently need to include somehow the ability to make advanced computers.
There’s no practical way of returning resources from a space colony many light years from Earth. So, the colonists must be heading out there in their own self interest. Nobody is going to pay you to mine rocks on Alpha Centauri if it takes years to get anything back, you must have set out because you are interested in living there. So, the quality of life must not be much, much worse than Earth. Fairly up to date manufacturing will be table stakes for most colonists I think.
People regularly say this, and I've yet to find a convincing argument for it.
The "backwards time travel" argument presupposes that an object is actually moving through space at a speed faster than light - i.e. with an imaginary Lorentz factor (1/sqrt(1-(v^2/c^2))) and all the shenanigans that entails. That presupposition ignores hypothetical approaches like wormholes and Alcubierre drives that outright shorten the distance to be traversed and thus don't entail actually moving at such speeds (and therefore keeping the Lorentz factor right around its normal happy 1).
Put differently: such an argument presupposes that a light cone is actually cone-shaped, whereas wormholes and Alcubierre drives throw a wrench in that, producing all sorts of lumpiness that keeps events within the same (really weird looking) light cone despite taking place at long distances.
I'm actually curious, has FTL ever been observed in reality, even for just individual particles? My personal belief is that backwards time travel is impossible because the universe changes in-place, but I haven't actually done any research on the subject so I could be totally wrong.
Information has not been observed to travel faster than light. What I mean by “FTL travel allows the traveler to go back in time” is, if one were to abuse the equations to get a traveler that is moving faster than light, some times would also end up looking negative.
But these are nonsense quantities that come about from abusing the equations, I mention it not because I think it is a practical concern but to highlight that we can’t just say “assuming FTL” without also being charged with ancillary crimes against the laws of physics!