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Limits and Signatures of Relativistic Spaceflight

posted by martyb on Saturday April 11 2015, @02:38PM   Printer-friendly
from the 'contrails'-in-space! dept.

sudo rm -rf writes:

In an article published on arXiv.org [Full article available] California-based Raytheon engineers Ulvi Yurtsever and Steven Wilkinson say that any interstellar spacecraft traveling at near-light speed would leave distinct light signatures in its wake.

While special relativity imposes an absolute speed limit at the speed of light, our Universe is not empty Minkowski spacetime. The constituents that fill the interstellar/intergalactic vacuum, including the cosmic microwave background photons, impose a lower speed limit on any object traveling at relativistic velocities. Scattering of cosmic microwave photons from an ultra-relativistic object may create radiation with a characteristic signature allowing the detection of such objects at large distances.

 
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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday April 11 2015, @09:31PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday April 11 2015, @09:31PM (#169087)

    Likely because warping space requires exotic matter that we don't even know to exist and/or enough mass to kill anything you are transporting.