First Earthlike Exoplanet Found

[Ironside]

And they will probably be greeted by a thriving human colony established by the first human visitors of Gliese, who left 200 years after the generation ship, using some snappy anti-matter propulsion.

This "paradox" gets even funnier if they're traveling near the speed of light, then you can have the same persons that borded the ship to be 200 years late. Poor buggers
Point was, that we can evacuate "humanity" within a few years if things go badly. That I wouldn't recommend it unless you're very, very desperate (and the sun turning too hot or into a red giant would be such a thing) is another matter.

[Andres]

Who needs all those equations and difficult formulas when the only thing you need to get there is some LSD...

[Moros]

Who needs all those equations and difficult formulas when the only thing you need to get there is some LSD...

2 words: Hawaïaanse paddo's.

[Moros]

Light doesn't have mass, only momentum derived from its energy*. The thing with gravity and light is that even though light travels straight, uninfluenced by the gravity, the space itself in which light travels is curved by the gravity. So the photons think they're going in a straight line, and they're right, but everybody else thinks they go in a curve. And they're right as well. Simple, yes?

special relativity combined with general relativity that is? Hmmm...

Oh well it's not my job to figure out a way to get there. I'm not a superhuman, like them Japanese.

[JR-]

Well can't ion drives reach something like 'near' the speed of light if given enough time to accelerate? My understanding was that something with ion drive, like the one tested on some probe a year or two ago, will continuously accelerate until it reaches 99.9% of the speed of light but it would take many years to get going that fast..

an ion-drive, as we currently understand them, is capable of a maximum of ~100,000 MPH, roughly four times faster than the limit of chemical combustion, i.e. rockets.

they are a bit lacking in thrust however.

[ShadeHonestus]

I'll bet somebody $20 dollars that human beings will cease to exist prior to our capacity for interstellar travel (in my view impossible for an individual) or the end of earth with its consumption by our sun which should take place in about 4 billion years as the sun's size increases near its death.

I'll even give 1,000,000,000,000:1 odds.