" Scientists Are Now Even More Confused By Potential "Alien Superstructure" August 15, 2016 From Popular Mechanics Within our own galaxy, some astronomers believe there may be a massive piece of alien technology, built to harvest energy from a distant star. The star, KIC 8462852, also known as Tabby’s Star, exhibits strange behavior, flickering and dimming, that can’t be explained by any known astronomical phenomena. A new, unpublished study posted to arXivreports the results of studying images of the star from the Kepler Telescope over the past four years. The paper shows shocking results: the star’s luminosity varied, sometimes dipping by 20% over the course of the study period. Even more perplexingly, its total luminosity, or flux, diminished by 4% overall over that time. “The part that really surprised me was just how rapid and non-linear [the dimming] was,” study author Ben Montet of Caltech told Gizmodo. “We spent a long time trying to convince ourselves this wasn’t real. We just weren’t able to.” Tabby’s Star was first observed in the 19th century, providing scientists plenty of data to reference in their search for answers. Another researcher, Bradley Schaefer of Louisiana State University, published a study earlier this year claiming that the light output of the star has decreased by 19% in 100 years. His claims were highly disputed. Now, this data seems to back up the assertion that the star is dimming at an astonishingly rapid rate, even if Schaefer’s data is not totally accurate. One of the explanations for this phenomena, and the one that has received the most press, is the idea that the star could be flickering and dimming due to an “alien superstructure” that extraterrestrial beings are building around their star as a way, perhaps, to collect energy (these hypothetical structure are known as Dyson spheres). Though there’s been no proof of this hypothesis, it also can’t be ruled out. The other theories, including that the star is blocked by the debris of a smashed planet, or that the dimming is caused by what’s known as “gravity darkening,” would go towards explaining parts of the phenomenon, but no current theory could explain it entirely. “The new paper states, and I agree, that we don’t have any really good models for this sort of behavior,” Jason Wright, the Penn State astronomer who first suggested the alien superstructure theory, said. “That’s exciting!” " https://www.yahoo.com/news/scientists-now-even-more-confused-160810001.html
"NASA's 'impossible' EM Drive works: German researcher confirms and it can take us to the moon in just 4 HOURS A+A- PrintEmail Over the past whole year, there's been a lot of excitement about the electromagnetic propulsion drive, also known as EM Drive - a logically impossible engine that's challenged almost everyone's prospects by continuing to stand up to experimental study. The EM drive is so thrilling because it yields enormous amounts of propulsion that could hypothetically blast us to Mars in only 70 days, without the need for dense and costly rocket fuel. Instead, it's actually propelled forward by microwaves bouncing back and forth inside a sealed off chamber, and this is what makes the EM drive so powerful, and at the same time so debatable. Image: A Hall ion thruster. Credit: NASA/JPL As effective as this kind of propulsion may sound, it challenges one of the essential concepts of physics - the conservation of momentum, which states that for anything to be propelled forward, some kind of propellant must be pushed out in the opposite direction. For that reason, the drive was generally laughed at and overlooked when it was designed by English scientist Roger Shawyer in the early 2000s. But a few years later, a group of Chinese researchers decided to construct their own version, and to everyone's amazement, it really worked. Then an American inventor did the something just like that, and convinced NASA's Eagleworks Laboratories, supervised by Harold 'Sonny' White, to give it a try. And they admitted that it actually works. Now Martin Tajmar, a well-known professor and chairman for Space Systems at Dresden University of Technology in Germany, has worked with his own EM Drive, and has once again revealed that it produces thrust - although for reasons he can't clarify yet. Tajmar offered his outcomes at the 2015 American Institute for Aeronautics and Astronautics' Propulsion and Energy Forum and Exposition in Florida on 27th of July, and you can read his entire paper here. He has a long history of experimentally testing (and exposing) revolutionary propulsion systems, so his outcomes are a big deal for those looking for outside confirmation of the EM Drive. Most importantly, his system produced a parallel amount of thrust as was initially forecast by Shawyer, which is more than a few thousand times greater than a typical photon rocket. So where does all of this leave us with the EM Drive? While it's fun to speculate about just how revolutionary it could be for humanity, what we really need now are results published in a peer-reviewed journal - which is something that Shawyer claims he is just a few months away from doing, as David Hambling reports for Wired. So it might turn out that we need to modify some of our laws of physics in order to clarify how the drive actually works. But if that opens up the opportunity of human travel throughout the entire Solar System - and, more significantly, beyond - then it's a sacrifice we're certainly willing to make. " http://www.physics-astronomy.com/2015/07/nasas-impossible-em-drive-works-german.html#.V75p3JgrJgB
I mean you'd think, but I don't know. Fund an orbiting mission to test the drive and see if it actually works in that environment. If it continues to show effectiveness, then let's start worrying about flying people around.
As long as it accelerates at a speed we can tolerate (which I'd assume you can control) it doesn't matter how fast it travels in regards to how it effects the human body.
Of course it does, as far as the article's premise goes. In order to reach the speed that they are talking about, they either will have to accelerate "fast" or "long". "Fast" will break us. "Long" will take forever, negating the achievement of "70 days to Mars". That doesn't take into account various sci-fi solutions of gravitation beds and stuff (which, of course, do not really work). --- Mars is 54.6 million kilometers from Earth. Which means that to get there in 70 days you need to travel at approximately 9000 meter/second or Mach 30 (someone check me on that one). My physics has never been strong, so I am not sure what the gravitational impact or terminal velocity (in vaccuum is there one?).... but that's a crazy speed. For comparison - fighter jets reach Mach 6 (at the very very top and as an experiment). ---
But do we know that the human body reacts the same way in space? Also Ras's point is that you sacrifice some speed if you have to, but still move as quickly as possible.
Same laws of physics apply (unless we are talking black holes and such), so the impact would be the same. I fear that "as quickly as possible" would take us from "70 days to Mars" to "5 years to Mars". Just doesn't have the same ring to it, don't you agree?
Sure, but there's other ways of looking at: 5 years to Mars is still remarkable and 70 days to Mars means constant supplies are not impossible. If that timeline is accurate we could potentially have a functioning colony on Mars in 5-10 years. That DOES have a certain ring to it.
Only for acceleration and deceleration where the body's gravity pressure threshold would be in play. The majority of the time traveling in space, the body wouldn't be effected because it's going the same speed as the ship.
