Space Time explores the outer reaches of space, the craziness of astrophysics, the possibilities of sci-fi, and anything else you can think of beyond Planet Earth with our astrophysicist host: Matthew O’Dowd.
For all business inquiries and sponsorship opportunities please reach out to: pbsspacetime@lighthouseagents.com
Matt O'Dowd spends his time studying the universe, especially really far-away things like quasars, super-massive black holes, and evolving galaxies. He uses telescopes in space to do it. Matt completed his Ph.D. at NASA's Space Telescope Science Institute, followed by work at the University of Melbourne and Columbia University. He's now a professor at the City University of New York's Lehman College and an Associate at the American Museum of Natural History's Hayden Planetarium.
Previous host Gabe Perez-Giz is an astrophysicist who studies black hole physics. He received his Ph.D. from Columbia University and also hosted PBS Infinite Series.
On a generation ship you will need eugenics. With such limited resources and the vagaries of reproduction you will need to overproduce humans to maintain genetic vigor and cull early any less vigorous variations so as not to waste life support resources and to efficiently reuse biological matter. Will this be decided by the crew somehow or will it need to be enforced by a machine? Or will we just let nature take its course and let the strong eat the weak? I wouldn't want to be born on a generation ship.
Aerospace engineer: I ve seen a huge black relativistic coaster ufo. This leads to a pre-liminary conjecture that sub-luminal warp-drive is possible. The same ship was pictured in 1566. If it’s a supply ship - it’s crew could just spend a relativistic year on the ship while travelling 400 lightyears. This also means wear and tear on machinery and crew is minimized.
Great video! Implying that our black holes could support other universes and that our universe was created out of a black hole in our motherverse. Implies that each universe shares the same laws of physics if our black holes are the same as the one that created our universe in our motherverse as the video suggest. On the other hand, if a black hole in our motherverse created our universe and our black holes do not create universes, then our motherverse may have separate laws of physics that supports us being created in a black hole. I'm not going against this video, I agree with all of it, I'm just expanding my thoughts.
You will also need iterations. Clusters of independent ships, each cluster on slightly different trajectories or launch times. Some ships will fail and need rescuing. Some paths may become closed for reasons we cannot see from where we are. Ships may need to learn from the failures of others.
To ensure psychological stability and to address stay-on-mission-track just upload all episodes of PBS Space Time. This will partially cover education as well. Just don't give them any of Star Trek and etc. Imagine how painful it will be for them to hear every time "warp 7, energize!"
With the leaps and bounds AI and supplementary technology is making, I think the reality of some kind of startreck-esque holodeck analogue, probably is not that far off
Totally implausible on all fronts. Every failure point mentioned (plus many more!) = an insurmountable obstacle, not just for us now but also for our descendants and for all other intelligent biological life the universe is capable of producing in the next 100 trillion or so years while stars still shine. This should be the null hypothesis. And the assumed solution of the Fermi Paradox. Sorry, fanboys and fangirls, the engineering is, and will always be, until the heat death of the universe, too damn hard. We’re stuck here.
I don't see a generation ship ever being viable. People would become socially accustomed to ship living. Let alone the physical changes that would come from living in space for generations.
I think in all reality the building blocks for life are probably in so many ways and so many forms we cant even understand. Looking at one sample(earth) and determining that the entire universe is the same is stupid.
I think partly this may be true because AIs that can be your therapist seem very much impossible under the HIPA Act. To create such an AI, we would need to train a neural network on real transcripts from real therapy. That is not allowed.
You don't send flesh. You send information. A tiny ship (as small as you can) whose goal is to build a tiny factory. You then build a larger factory with those tiny factories. After dozens of generations you get an industrial base. This industrial base prints a biosphere. Then it prints a himan and prints a brain in that human (possibly biology/non-biology hybrid) it copied at the start location. This printed human then raises further humans as the industrial base expands and more biosphere is built. You carry genetic info and print sperm and human eggs and use incubators.
For the past year or so I've been a big fan of this theory. A singularity of "infinite" density never really made sense to me. I like the idea of black holes being kind of like extremely dense neutron stars instead.
There's absolutely no way people will remain sane inside a 100m rotating ring for 140 years. Either the ship would have to be much larger or we would need working suspended animation.
What if the planet isn't habitable? Turn around and come home? Tech advancements during the journey will probably result in more advanced ships being built that would catch up to this 1st ship, hopefully.
Why not just bring a ton of different eggs and sperm samples from people not necessarily on the ship, and use in vetro fertilization? Or are we assuming the ships will launch from Alabama for some reason?
OMG not the GS Idea again so your not looking at Warp drive that is now science theory ??? it is no longer SIFI. also one Big thing YOU CANT TELL ME WHAT THE FUTURE TECHS WILL BE, many people have tried to do this for 100's of yrs and they all got it WRONG !!! why do you Humans not embrace this space engine tech, you completely Ignore it Why ????????????????????
What a nice coincidence. I pointed out a few weeks ago the photons not only getting delayed and redshifted, but the optical image of Alice being distorted due to the lensing effect. Most videos on this disregard the secondary effects. Another interesting effect is the EH appearing to be further away when accelerating. At half the speed of light, one would see the borders of the EH at 45⁰ angles in front of oneself, when actually crossing it at that instant.
Hello, Humans Those who are different tend to suffer in silence. Don't assume you know someone, because you can compare them to the humans you know. TERRANCE OUT
One aspect of the challenge missing here is the repair and maintenance of the ship. Most machines we have today last less than a human lifetime. Cars and computers don't work much more than 20 years, so a much more complex ship will need a self sufficient way to recycle not only water and air, but also every single one of its electronic and mechanical components. Let's say a computer on board needs a motherboard. The ship will need a machine that can melt down this mother board after and build a new one. That machine will need to be able to rebuild itself too. It will be the spaceship equivalent to eating your own arm in order to regrow the other. Such a ship can't just pull over next to an asteroid and mine new resources.
6300 years is not an option and if we had to make nuclear work better faster, then we will just do it. Our constraints now are mostly caused by money. If we have to skedaddle to safety, then money should be no barrier.