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  • -This video was made possible by Brilliant.

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  • -So you probably know that stars are pretty far away

  • -But you may have also dreamed about visiting one since you were a kid.

  • -Science fiction has taught us that travelling to a distant star system may not be too far off in the distant future.

  • -But Science fiction rarely gets into some of the largest problems that surround this concept.

  • -I've made one video before discussing the possibility of humanity reaching another star in your life-time and to summarize that one,

  • -The best you can hope for is *Maybe* a tiny probe the Proxima Centauri system sometime in a few decades

  • That might be capable of taking some pictures of the planets there

  • But as for you actually going yourself in visiting a planet that orbits a distanse star

  • Unless you can figured out how to become immortal you likely never will

  • And here are some of the biggest reasons why

  • The distances are obviously huge and traveling across those distances will take a lot of time

  • The fastest speed that humanity has ever achieved with a man-made object was using a Helios 2 prom

  • which ** to 240 000km/h

  • That's fast enough to circle around the entire Earth in just about 10 minutes.

  • With going in that speed will still take about 19 000 years

  • of just reach Proxima Centauri - the nearest other star to the Sun

  • But lets speculate for a moment now that perhaps this is the fastest speed that we ever could reach using a spaceships with actuall humans on board

  • We build a ship with about 100 person crew that we populated-self over generations until we gets to Proxima Centauri

  • This concept is known as Generation Ship

  • and the people on board will live their entire lifes without every living the small space of the ship

  • before arriving at its destination over 600 generations of people will live at this bizzare exsistance

  • before finally arriving 19 000 years later at their destination and goal:

  • The first humans to ever colonised antoher star system.

  • The only problem is tho: after they finally do arrive, they not only discover, that humans are already there,

  • but have been there already for tousands of years

  • and have completly colonised the new planet with milions of people and huge cities.

  • The reason this could happend is that the people of 2018 assumed the speed of 240 000 km/h

  • was the fastest speed we could achieved on a ship

  • and so they send up their colonists under that assumption.

  • However, after 19 000 years into their yourney, they were still 18 000 years more away from getting to their planet.

  • Back on Earth, tho, a thousand years of technological development was enough time to discover much faster forms of space travel.

  • And the people od the year 3018 will be capable of sending out colonist on the ship that could reach the planet in just 5 000 years.

  • So their ship endend up passing the one l*** in 2018 arrived to the destination planet thousands of years before it

  • and have enougt time to completly develop civilisation there before the 2018 ship arrived

  • and discover their entire 19 000 years of deal and suffering was all for... nothing.

  • Who knows what psychological or feel self- problems such an experience could create for those people

  • But this entire problem is known as the Wait Calculation

  • When is the optimal time for humanity to send colonist out to another star?

  • The concept was first written about by Andrew Kennedy in a paper written in 2006.

  • Kennedy assumed, that it have to be a minimum travel time to any place in the Universe.

  • And that ment was our technology was close to achieving it we could safely send colonist out and avoid the risk of living too early for nothing.

  • But deciding when the best time to live is.. is pretty complicated.

  • And think about the implications that poses to any would-be space traveler:

  • Would you volunteerly signed up to be locked in the space ship for the rest of your life,

  • along with your children's life and their children's, and their children's and so on houndred of time over?

  • When the only pay-off will be being told that: One day humanity will colonise another planet star thanks to your sacrifice?

  • But then you remember the Wait calculation and release that only pay of is actually a huge gamble

  • and you sacifice maybe worthless and along run.

  • You'll be insine to take that risk and everybody else will feel the same way,

  • so convincing anybody to get on the Generation Ship like this at almost anytime in the future

  • would be almost impossible..unles you forced them to.

  • Would be colonist always assumed, that peopole in the future would just create faster form of transportation,

  • that would completly negate their own journeys?

  • That is until we descover a way to travel at or near light speed.

  • It appears, that the speed od light is the Universe highest speed limit.

  • And so, naturally, if humanity ever discover a way to travel near it,

  • potential colonists could rest their sure that they sacrifices their travel that never be en vain.

  • Like the explorers aboard the ABC Jungle Fruit

  • are cruisers searching for resourses

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