Future astronauts travelling to distant stars and galaxies at near-light-speed would be unable to receive communications from Earth until their ship reached its destination, with the exception of a brief period following launch, according to the results of a newly published scientific study.
When it comes to near light speed communication, the laws of physics appear to be very much against us. Granted, on Earth, the time lag between sending a message and receiving it is barely noticable. However, with greater distances come greater problems. For example, it can take a satellite orbiting Mars 5-20 minutes to receive a message from NASA, and over 22.5 hours to reach the Voyager 1 probe, which is currently making its way through the interstellar medium at a distance of over 15 billion miles from Earth.
According to the results of a recent paper published to the research-sharing platform arXiv, the issue of long range communication becomes orders of magnitude trickier when the spaceship you’re trying to talk to is travelling at a velocity close to the speed of light. As it stands, near-light-speed travel remains firmly in the realm of science fiction. However, just because a technology currently seems impossible, doesn’t mean it won’t one day be invented, especially when you take into account our species’ rate of technological progression.
The faster you go, the further you travel into the future of those you left. Time dilation is cruel to biological, emotional beings such as ourselves.
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