In the upcoming blogs, I plan on talking more about humans finding life on another planet or potentially living on a planet. Before I talk more about this, we’re first going to consider how we may get to that planet because it can take a lot of time!Â
A recurring topic in these blogs is the electromagnetic (EMR) spectrum. In case you don't know much about this, the EMR spectrum is essentially a spectrum that shows the different types of radiation and their frequency and wavelengths. Radiation is a form of energy that spreads in many directions as it travels. Visible light, for example, is a form of this energy and it travels in many directions (which is why objects are visible to us). Many other types of energy are on the spectrum like microwaves, infrared, radio, and more.Â
All of these energies travel at the same speed, 3.0 x 10^8 m/s through a vacuum (like space where there are no particles to slow down these energies). The specific energy we will be focusing on today is light. Scientists have been devising ways to find ways spacecraft can travel at the speed of light because you can get to more celestial bodies much faster. If you read my blog about Voyager 1, I mentioned its mission to travel to Jupiter and Saturn which took three years and two months to arrive. If the spacecraft could travel at the speed of light, it would have taken around an hour! Having this tactic would immensely help humans potentially travel to planets in our solar system and other solar systems.
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You might be thinking, why don’t spacecraft travel at the speed of light currently? The answer to this involves a lot of complicated physics that Einstein and a lot of physicists were able to dumb down for us! Traveling at the speed of light requires a lot of energy, like an infinite amount! The thing is, the faster you travel, the heavier you get, and since you’re getting heavier and want to travel faster, this requires far too much energy. The fastest spacecraft today can travel approximately 535, 000 kilometres per hour, around 0.05% of the speed of light.Â
Let’s say we have a revolution in the aerospace industry and we can figure out how to have a spacecraft travel at the speed of light, what might that look like? Again, this is where Einstein’s special relativity rules come in and they’re actually quite interesting! I won’t go into a lot of details because the topics are quite heavy and they might make your brain hurt so I’ll save you from the trouble! Essentially, if you can travel at the speed of light, you will age much slower than someone who is stationary or is nowhere near the speed you are traveling at. This is known as time dilation. Note that this would still work if you were traveling at speeds less than the speed of light, I gave this example because the effects are discernible if you travel at the speed of light.Â
In case you don’t believe me, you can test it out! If you own a car, place an analog clock in there and drive around with it. At home, leave another analog clock and ensure both are set to the same time. After driving around with your clock, compare the two. You will find that the clock that was at home was ticking much faster than the one in the car.Â
All of this connects with life on other planets because the journey to these planets is crucial. If humans can find a planet in a place 30 light years away and we can travel at the speed of light, there are a lot of cons as well as pros. One of the main consequences is that if you can go to this planet, once you return to Earth, more than 60 years will have elapsed (discounting the amount of time you take on the planet). You may return the same age as your grandparents due to time dilation.Â
Stay tuned for more blogs as we look for signs of life on planets in other solar systems!
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