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You guys are not realizing that just because something is impossible for us, doesn't mean it can't be done. Sure there are stars 500 light years away...how do we know that there isn't a fast way to get there? We don't know because we haven't discovered it yet. What if aliens are here and hiding from us using a technology that we could never even think possible? Do you think 200 years ago they would think we would be in space, holding a PHONE in our hands that is more powerful that most computers? No.
We can only explain things that we know about. We don't know how to get to the closest star, so we think "ok it will take us 500 years to get there if we go at the speed of light so that means it will take them 500 years" You are not thinking about the possibility of them being far more advanced than us, millions of years more advanced, and knowing how to travel there in a way that is faster than light. Maybe the faster way to travel isnt to go forward...but to bend time? We don't know, and will not know for a very long time.
Interesting but sort of an acid trip thought.
I like people who think like you. Great for stories.
Jets have been around since the 1940s. People are still going to be flying in Jets in 100 years and in 1000 years from now.
Not necessarily. A century or so in the future, all long-distance transport could be in subterranean or subpelagic pneumatic tubes, or in vehicles kept aloft by magnetic levitation, neither requiring jets. Or, society so fearfully xenophobic that long distance travel would simply not occur at all an a highly fragmented and isolationist global organization. Or exhausted energy resources obstructing such wasteful brute force for propulsion.
100 years ago if you suggested having breakfast in NYC then having dinner of the same day in California you would be laughed at or locked up.
My point is what will be possible in 100 years or 200.
You really don't have a point but I like that you have a good imagination. There will never be a century where inventions progress at such an accelerated rate as they did during the last hundred years of the 20th century. The 20th century started in the infancy of airplanes, cars, radio. It will never again accelerate at such a fast pace as it did from the infancy.
It might indeed be possible to travel great distances in one lifetime due to time dilation. If one was able to travel at or near the speed of light, that being would age substantially slower than someone standing still. This is nature's way of protecting the universal speed limit. Time slows down just enough to prevent anything from ever exceeding it. Imagine a spaceship traveling at light speed. Now picture an astronaut moving forward up the spacecraft as its traveling forward as well. Conventional thinking would say that he just broke the light barrier but he doesn't because of this time slowing effect.
Someone traveling at 99% the speed of light for one earth year would only age something like two weeks inside the spacecraft if I'm not mistaken. Theoretically, one could travel great distances in one lifetime due to this effect. However, if and when you returned to Earth, say 20 years later, everyone you ever knew would be long dead and you would essentially return to an Earth that is multitudes older than you. You would return to a future Earth.
Not necessarily. A century or so in the future, all long-distance transport could be in subterranean or subpelagic pneumatic tubes, or in vehicles kept aloft by magnetic levitation, neither requiring jets. Or, society so fearfully xenophobic that long distance travel would simply not occur at all an a highly fragmented and isolationist global organization. Or exhausted energy resources obstructing such wasteful brute force for propulsion.
This makes me think of Marty McFly breaking into George McFly's house and playing Van Halen on a walk man.
100 years ago if you suggested having breakfast in NYC then having dinner of the same day in California you would be laughed at or locked up.
My point is what will be possible in 100 years or 200.
Excellent post.
I'll add that in 100 years from now humans will regularly surpass the current 120 year life span maximum as well as curing spinal cord paralysis and ALS etc. as biotech breakthroughs will explode in this coming century.
I'll add that in 100 years from now humans will regularly surpass the current 120 year life span maximum as well as curing spinal cord paralysis and ALS etc. as biotech breakthroughs will explode in this coming century.
You're overlooking a lot of factors. Attempting to push the lifespan of humans will expand, geometrically, the difficulty of overcoming the cause of death. Humans were thought in biblical times to have a life span of 70 years, and globally, human life expectancy in the year 2012 is a disappointing 67.2, in spite of all our medical science heretofore. All we have done is to filter out a privileged class of humans and add a decade or so to their lives, without adding much quality, if any, to that additional decade.
The human body is the sum of its parts, and all parts have evolved to wear out after about 70 years. Every morbidity and mortality cause you defeat will open more and more people to the next even more difficult challenge.
If, beginning tomorrow, the average lifespan of humans suddenly went from 70 to 120, even with birth rates held at replacement, the population in a century would increase by 70%, with every one of those additional 5 billion people demanding the unbelievably expensive medical procedures required to keep them alive that long.
You would gain absolutely nothing, if your scenario consists only of keeping a few token examples alive until 120, at huge expense, in your brave new world.
Life on Earth is a closed system, the human species has been detected as a pathogen, and antibodies (spinal cord paralysis, ALS, etc.) are being formed as I write, to attack us. The battle will never be won. Nature is a universal constant, not something humans contrived to amuse themselves on a walk in the woods.
The two largest causes of premature death in the world are water-borne dysentery followed by mosquito-borne malaria. Modern ingenuity has responded by selling them Coca-cola and banning DDT, while squandering intellect on the spinal cord paralysis of golfers at the country club.
You would gain absolutely nothing, if your scenario consists only of keeping a few token examples alive until 120, at huge expense, in your brave new world.
Using science to expand the maximum life span will be accompanied with a vast improvement of quality of life issues as well in the coming decades. We are currently growing healthy organs and neurons etc. to which will one day be the norm in medicine (remember the successful transplanted trachea 2008) as well as advances of knowledge in cellular genetics and proteomics to counter the ravages of senescence.
Am i being overly optimistic? Possibly, however as someone who has been following the research of longevity science since the 1990's i feel confident that humans by year 2100 will be living to age 150 and yet as vibrant as today's healthy 40 year old.
If you are concerned about not being around to partake in the coming wonders of the longevity medical revolution then may i suggest as part of your daily routine a small consumption of caberet sauvignon as to positively influence your sirtuin genes .
If you are concerned about not being around to partake in the coming wonders of the longevity medical revolution then may i suggest as part of your daily routine a small consumption of caberet sauvignon as to positively influence your sirtuin genes .
I fear I will in fact live too long. My parents died at 94 and 98, and that is an indignity I would rather be spared.
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