The challenges of interstellar travel are immense, we see it if only to organize from A to grave. Z a mission to Mars. However, today’s scientists have no shortage of ideas for facilitating this type of trip to people. the future. A scientist has just proposed an easier, albeit very slow, way to move between the stars, and if she is right, it could change the way we live. to consider interstellar travel, and the search for life elsewhere than on planet Earth.
The difficulties of interstellar travel
Science fictionsometimes makes us feel like it’s easy to jump from planet to planet, but the truth is is quite different. The motors at; distortion and other crazy assumptions related to a speed greater than that of lightmay well be totally unthinkable (forever). Even the creation of spacecraft capable of transporting humans to Substantial fractions of the speed of light would require the use of amounts of energy at barely conceivable.
If we start from this premise, it will therefore take hundreds of years, at a minimum, to reach the nearest stellar system. Every starship we might build will also have to be large enoughto carry thousands of people, in order to potentially be able to recreate an autonomous civilization in transit. Building a large enough ship would impose high costs, even at a very advanced civilization, but Irina Romanovskaya, a scientist at Houston Community College, has another suggestion. In a scientific article published in the International Journal of Astrobiology, the latter indeed explores the possibility of to hitchhike on a planet in transit.
A different way of looking at space travel
We know that some planets travel through space without being accompanied by an object. ;star: these are the wandering (or “floating”) planets. A wandering planet is only gravitationally bound to no stars or brown dwarfs, and wanders through space as an independent object. Astronomers currently estimate that there may be twice as many wandering planets the size of Jupiter as there are planets. ;stars throughout the Universe.
Representation of a wandering planet.
Some of these wandering planets were probably projected by the internal dynamics of star systems, while others may have formed independently. According to Irina Romanovskaya, these wandering planets offer real opportunities, which will have to be seized. the future. Indeed, according to the scientist, the interstellar distances are so great that they will pose a problem in the future, when it comes to transporting entire populations. À unless the shipstops on a wandering planet for a while.
If a population manages to to settle there temporarily indeed, the latter would only have to wait for the wandering planet to change to proximity (or at least within an acceptable distance)of another planet. The population at the stop could then resume its interstellar path, while having performed; a break of varying length on a wandering planet.
Representation of a wandering planet.
If Irina Romanovskaya’s proposal< /strong> is attractive, it also has many challenges. Wandering planets would be difficult, if not impossible, to drive. Instead of taking travelers directly to a promising star system, the wandering planet could, in fact, very well transport them to very unwelcoming systems. And the wait could be long, very long, with the problems that we know (freezing cold, cosmic radiation, and other problems). p>
For Irina Romanovskaya, however, it may well be the only viable way to travel in space, and the latter details in her article the different ways in which humanity could use materials found on a wandering planet to survive. His work also shedsinteresting light on the Fermi Paradox.
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Zoom in on the fermi paradox
The Fermi paradox is the name given to it. to a series of questions posed by the Italian physicist Enrico Fermiin 1950, while debating with friends the possibility of of extraterrestrial life and a visit from extraterrestrials. According to Fermi, more advanced civilizations should have appear among older planetary systems and leave traces visible from Earth,such as radio waves. The Fermi paradox can be stated in the form of the following question: “If there were extraterrestrial civilizations, their representatives should already be here. Where are they?”.
If one believes in the veracity of the work of Irina Romanovskaya, and if the use of wandering planets is indeed the only viable means of interstellar travel, then the research The answer to the Fermi Paradox is: the aliens are not here; since interstellar travel could be so slow that much of the galaxy, especially towards the outer edges, could remain unexplored for billions of years. We will therefore have to be patient if we wish to welcome travellers from elsewhere, and if we wish, ourselves, to hitchhike via wandering planets in the future.
And if you want to know who was the first interstellar visitor we encountered, you can read our previous article on the subject.< /p>