If we discover the means to travel faster than light, but researching and developing the technology means that the Earth is destroyed in just a few decades, should the technology still be pursued?
Edit: A bunch of yall don't seem to grasp the concept of a theoretical question
No. Slower than light travel will still enable a smaller amount of colonization of the local area. Where if we do anything that destroys the planet, that's kinda putting all your eggs in one basket. If that goes catastrophically wrong, as things sometimes do, then everything gets fucked up.
It's just an unnecessary risk.
Yes.
Why not extend our environmental destruction into the farthest reaches of the universe? The heat death of the universe will be humanity extracting every last bit of energy from it to sell ads for the most trivial bullshit imaginable.
I love the idea of our expansion being dependant on destroying our own home planet.
I'd nuke all of you in a second to get to travel the stars. Maybe carve "Later, bitches!" Into siberia with my motherfucking space lasers.
I like the way you think.
Oddly specific... What are you doing OP? Should we be worried? Honestly "faster than light" travel is already too generic: do you mean going actually FTL or breaking the space barrier with wormholes or space displacement shenanigans that "look like" FTL? That said, Earth destroyed in a few decades because of the research or the PRODUCTION of such method? A little bit of context would made answering this question way more interesting...
The question is to make us think about the moral and practical aspects of advancing technology, leaving room for different interpretations to encourage diverse discussions. It's like a 'what if' scenario, helping us explore the consequences of scientific progress without prescribing a single answer.
No. While faster than light travel might secure the human race's survival and intergalactic presence, is the human race more important than our planet? I don't think so..
While I value human life, we're just hairless apes that are both too smart for our own good and still incredibly simple-minded and tribal. Our importance is self-importance. What is the benefit of human-kind for the universe? So far we're making existence worse for other species. We're already destroying our planet.
Emotionally and selfishly I want us to continue going, but I think our existence has been far more detrimental than neutral, and certainly far from a positive impact on nature. We're parasites to this planet, and I think a life-supporting planet is more important than the selfish and detrimental endeavors carried out by one species.
The Earth is more important than our selfish asses.
By that same logic the Earth is just a rock floating through space with self replicating molecules on it. What makes it any more or less important than us? It's all rather meaningless, no?
We're a virus on Earth, but just like viruses don't care about invading and killing the host - why should we care about killing the Earth? Don't misunderstand me - I think we should try and stop climate change from getting out of control from a practical standpoint. We're stuck here so rising temperatures will have serious long term impacts on our global society. But I think this idolization of nature argument falls flat - feels almost religious.
Main reason for me is that we are just as part of nature as anything else. To assume otherwise is arrogance.
What is the benefit of nature? Worth and importance are intrinsically human judgements, the universe doesn't give a damn about birds and plants any more than it does about us.
If you value life in general, humanity is the best chance life on earth has of ever getting off planet earth and into the galaxy before the sun dies.
For some reason this discussion brings to mind that one very short episode in Love Death and Robots.
No way.
Earth is the homeland, it's the botanical gardens, the tribal reservation, it comes first.
Now, if you could do it on, say, mars, absolutely.
Yea, FTL travel implies that we have somewhere else to go.
Now while I assume there are plenty of other habitable planets out there, strictly speaking we don’t know that.
Habitable also doesn't imply that we are compatible with the local ecosystem, just that we could bring the plants and animals we are compatible with, but for that they would still need to exist to take some.
Personally no. There's so many other obstacles to overcome with populating other planets that getting there isn't worth destroying the only one we have.
If we had others then maybe.
No. FTL travel does not mean we have the means to transport billions of people and the entire ecology around us including specific conditions of Earth's orbit in terms of temperature, day, month and year length and many other parameters each of those plants, animals,... requires to another place within a few decades.
what for
I don't think a civilization which would destroy their home with the single-minded goal of spreading throughout the universe in the blink of an eye should be allowed to spread beyond their local star system at all. Maybe re-evaluate after giving them a few centuries to mature.
Where would we go? We don't know of any other planets that we could easily live on.
Kepler-452b for starters but with FTL travel we could probably find quite a few more
Unless FTL travel is significantly faster than light, it's usefulness would be limited. Kepler-452 is located about 1,800 light-years from Earth, which means it would take light 1,800 years to travel that distance. Even if our theoritical FTL travel was twice as fast as light, it would still take us 900 years to get there...
Once we get there, it is still unlikely that the planet would be habitable for humans. Quoting Wikipedia:
There are closer exoplanets (closest one we know about is Proxima Centauri b), but even those are likely to be poorly suited for humans since we evolved to live specifically on Earth.
1800 years as observed from someone else watching the light travel. However, when travelling at c, you experience no time. From a photon's point of view, no time passes between when it is emitted and when it is absorbed.
Earth isn't travelling with you though so Earth would be toast long before you arrive.
It would depend on the flavour of FTL, if it means physically moving through space at supraluminal speeds (which would of course be impossible according to our current understanding), time would be flowing backwards.
Even traveling at the speed of light would be sufficient as it would mean getting to the destination the instant you achieved that speed.
But we do not even have to go as fast. Even doing constant 1G acceleration half the way with subsequent 1G deceleration for the other would enable us to reach the edge of the obervable universe withing the span of a human lifetime iirc.
And in addition to the peculiarity of relativistic travel, if we were to utilise something like wormholes, the elapsed time would be equivalent to the time traveled across the newly formed wormhole (plus getting to it and from it).
Where are we going to get the infinite energy required to move faster than light? ONSHORE WIND FARMS?!?!
Free wormhole with every ipad.
But harnessing the energy of artificial singularities is Romulan technology, we don't do that in this sector!
Have you been playing Starfield? This is related to something in the game.
If we'd ever discover FTL travel, the universe and causality would be broken. Earth might as well be a dragon at this point.
I feel like, maybe, you just watched Pandorum. As long as we don't let Dennis Quaid drive the ship, we should be okay.
That's a very specific scenario.
I would say no. But there's going to be a lot of factors that go into that decision. That I don't have the data for.
I think it's far more likely The Earth is going to live just long enough for us to have multiple planets colonized. Once we have multiple planets destroying a single planet becomes a viable military strategy. So that's when the earth will die.
The Earth will be fine once it's got rid of us.
Not if we hit it with a high velocity large mass!
A vague answer for a vague question, yes.
You'd have to explain how it will be destroyed. Since FTL allows for time travel it seems like any such crisis could be averted with FTL travel.
If I remember correctly, this is an element of the three body problem series. Essentially some type of warp drive would leave long term effects on the surrounding space-time.
Sort of like nuclear fallout, but at the solar system level. Basically to use it safely, you would need to travel at normal lower than light speed to some empty place and then from there use the FTL warp drive.
That's ok. Like taking your car to the track.
No with just the speed of light, yes with a speed higher than that of light, so beyond space and time.
Well the term faster-than-light does usually imply that it's faster than light
It seemed right to repeat it, because the speed limit of light is impossible to exceed.
Should we? No. Would we anyway?
... yeah, probably.
Eh, the planet will be destroyed completely in a few billion years anyway. Let's go out for one truly blistering joyride before we call it quits.
Yes, however we should wait about 500,000,000 years, cause the earth will be rendered uninhabitable by the sun around that time anyway.
Such a weird question, FTL would theoretically be a savior to the human race, but in what scenario would it be necessary to destroy the earth to make it work. Why couldn't you sacrifice Venus, or Neptune, or just fly for a decade or two out of the solar system before turning it on?
It's a philosophical dilemma. Is it worth destroying all we have in hopes of finding something more?
No? How is that even a question. There's almost 0% chance there's any world out there that's remotely suitable for human life.
We don't even know if there's any life out in the universe aside from on earth, why destroy it for no reason?
no lol, no amount of physics breaking scifi bs appealing to sfba nerds with too much vc money to care about external reality is worth pursuing
if this sounds weirdly specific, it's because it is. context: https://www.truthdig.com/articles/before-its-too-late-buddy/
How would we know it will destroy the Earth without doing the research? Also, will more research allow us to not destroy the Earth?
If we can build facilities to research it off-world, it’s likely to be a good idea. Though it may have to be left on the back burner for a while.
Depends what you mean by "destroy"
If you mean "make it uninhabitable for humans" ya sure, absolutely. It would mean we finally get off this rock and can leave it be. Earth will be fine without us and will soon enough (on the scale of time periods) return to business as usual.
Humans can move on like the parasites we are to new hosts, to extract and refuel and consume.
Starcraft tried to imply it was humans vs the zerg but we all have to accept the simple fact of the matter... we ARE the zerg
Sounds win win to me