720 wrote:Raps in 4 wrote:mrdressup wrote:
Aka, never.
We actually might never be able to visit this planet.
Our current understanding of physics unequivocally states that faster-than-light travel is impossible.
Light speed travel is technically, theoretically possible, but it leads to other problems (like time dilation).
The only way we'd realistically ever be able to reach this planet (according to modern science) is with generation ships that travel for hundreds/thousands of years. Nobody born on Earth would ever be able to see this planet (unless we discover a way to achieve immortality).
Of course, it could also turn out that our understanding of physics is incomplete (we know it is, just to what degree?) and that there are ways around all of these restrictions. I like to think that's the case because it's super depressing thinking that our species could be stuck in this solar system forever.
Wormholes where we bend space and time is theoretically possible and likely the only way for space travel the way sci fi depicts it.
Wormholes (that allow instantaneous travel from one point in space to another) would still create time paradoxes (according to our current understanding of physics). The same applies to "warp drives". This video explains it well:
Here is another physicist explaining why she thinks FTL travel might actually be possible, but that's definitely a fringe opinion from what I can gather (because it requires our current understanding of the universe to be incorrect/incomplete):
Considering our two leading theories in physics are over a hundred years old (general relativity and quantum mechanics), and we know that they are both incomplete (since we can't reconcile gravity between the two theories), I do think it's totally possible that we'll have new theories of the universe in the future that upend what we think is true today.