[Warwick]

Here you can post links to funny stuff from sites like 9Gag, Funnygag, tumblr etc.

I'll start - if you watched The Hunger Games, this will make you laugh:

http://9gag.com/gag/a8Wo50Z/

[SpookyZalost]

ok, this is funny, and hilariously true.

https://xkcd.com/2202/

[Guardian]

ok, this is funny, and hilariously true.

https://xkcd.com/2202/

Funny! Seems every few weeks there's a new 'earth' discovered with some similar characteristics later to be just... meh.

[SpookyZalost]

lol, it seems like we're the latest bastion that hell has yet to conquer more like XD.

remember proxima B?

tidally locked, swamped in radiation and solar flares.

but it's earth sized, in the habitable zone, and only 4 LY away lol.

btw, it looks like a giant eyeball staring into it's star.

[Guardian]

Totally doable then right? Should be there in... can't even count that far.

[SpookyZalost]

20 years actually with an orion drive, 50 if we push with laser propelled light sales and a good gravity assist up to 70psl

[Guardian]

20 years actually with an orion drive, 50 if we push with laser propelled light sales and a good gravity assist up to 70psl

Put me in cryo for a while. I don't want to wait out that journey.

[SpookyZalost]

@ Guardian.

you are forgetting something.

Time Dilation, what's 20 to 50 years on earth, is way less because relativity's a boss.

[Guardian]

But our body will still age in earth years... that's the hindrance.

[SpookyZalost]

yes but the body on the ship will age relative to how much time is dilated inside.

so 50 years on earth might only be 10 on ship.

that does mean that a round trip would be over a century though and everyone you know would be dead while you only age a couple decades.

[Guardian]

...you've lost me now. How in the *UNIVERSE* would that work? Our bodies don't recognize time, but they would still break down the same way and in the same timeframe (that it doesn't acknowledge, I know).

[SpookyZalost]

Alright, so here's the skinny of it.

time's rate is relative to the observed local dilation.

for example, an atomic clock in orbit will eventually become out of sync with the one on earth because earth's gravity dilates time ever so slightly.

this alters the rate of molecular constants relative to observed time between the two because time on earth is slightly slower than in orbit.

we're talking nanoseconds or less here but yeah.

so an object moving at or near the speed of light (%C or psl), will experience time dilation because it's observed mass increases towards infinity the closer you get to the speed of light.

this is discussed in einstein's theories of relativity.

note I said observed mass, not actual mass.

personally I think it's a kind of space/time drag, but that's yet to be fully proven yet, though it does hold up to existing evidence.

anyway so because of how objects near the speed of light bend and warp space/time due to their observed mass they dilate time at increasing rates the closer you get to the speed of light, theoretically if you were to travel at 99%c towards alpha centauri, you would get there in under 5 years, but on the ship it would feel instant due to the incredibly high observed mass.

this observed mass also has a fuel penalty making it impossible to get that close to the speed of light with conventional means.

and this does not affect things like space/time folding, warp drives, hyperspace, etc. though it might affect wormholes depending on how they're constructed... that's a whole other kettle of fish.

[Guardian]

I get what you're saying... but I don't GET what you're saying.

I'll leave that to you smart folks.

[SpookyZalost]

just remember, the faster you go, the heavier you get because physics.

and the heavier you are the more time slows down because relativity.

this theory was proven in various experiments on aircraft, the space shuttle, and with particle accelerators.

[Thomas]

http://9gag.com