Comments

You must log in or register to comment.

Feisty-Location-5708 t1_j6tpxkk wrote

I imagine it would be a lot like driving on a remote highway. At first it would be a cool experience, but after a while it would get boring looking at nothingness

13

ruico t1_j6tti0c wrote

Even traveling at the speed of light, it would take a lot of time to see anything interesting.

I don't think our conscience is prepared for that long voyage.

13

wasnt_a_fluke t1_j6u5zj2 wrote

Akchually.... Disregarding the "at the speed of light", travelling very close to the speed of light would make everything a very short time away, arbitrarily close to instant travel anywhere.

4

GamerGrunt t1_j6uatcd wrote

Only for the traveler though, right? Like it might feel instant to you, but the universe will be how ever many light years you traveled older cause of time dilation, yeah?

4

No-Session5955 t1_j6vgkjr wrote

Yup, from the moment a photon is emitted to whatever object it hits and gets absorbed by, from the photon’s perspective it is all instantaneous. Even if it’s traveling for 13.8 billion years or longer.

4

Twidom OP t1_j6wqd1n wrote

Really?

Why is that? Its kinda sad.

2

sintegral t1_j6wx6op wrote

Well, on the bright side, from its perspective, it’s exactly where it needs to be all the time.

4

robit_lover t1_j6xgnh6 wrote

Relativity, the faster you move the slower you experience time. It means you could never actually get to the speed of light, but the math says going at the speed of light you wouldn't experience time at all.

2

ruico t1_j6u7l46 wrote

Well, that you mention it...

It could be true, the preception of "passing time" could be less for a person that was travelling at the speed of light.

2

HotCarlWithaK t1_j6w9yww wrote

I’m slow, how is the sleep of light instantaneous? I thought light can only travel at… we’ll… the speed of light.

Take the andromeda galaxy for example, It’s 2.5 million light years away so I thought light takes 2.5 million years to travel to us.

Even if we could travel at the speed of light wouldn’t it take 2.5 million years to get there?

1

House13Games t1_j6wkp6v wrote

Its true that light takes 2.5 million years to travel to Andromeda, as seen by us who are mostly stationary and not doing the travelling. The thing is though, the faster you go, the more time on board the ship slows down, relative to the outside world. If the ship goes super fast, approaching lightspeed, it would look to observers on the outside that time is almost stopped onboard the ship. Or to look at it another way, from the point of view of astronauts on board the ship, the local shiptime is normal, but the time outside seems to get faster and faster. If the ship travels fast enough, you get to watch 2.5 million years go by outside, at which point you are at Andromeda.

If you are able to reach almost lightspeed, you can reach almost any part of the universe within your lifetime (or even years, or days, if you go extremely close to light speed), but, the universe will have aged by millions or billions of years when you get there. For photons, which actually do travel at lightspeed, the journey is instantaneous, as they don't experience time at all.

5

evqnmchl t1_j6xjclr wrote

Speed up and slow down time still mean it would take an absurd amount of time even relative to you.

0

Ok_Explorer604 t1_j6tt6dq wrote

Drifting aimlessly through space little a piece of debris would be the stuff of nightmares, and truly hell. You'd go insane from the oppressive nothingness.

​

Considering it takes light about 100,000 years to traverse the Milky Way, and our galaxy is nothing but a speck of sand on the beach, that's the universe.....you'd lose you mind before you even made it out of the solar system.

11

fiatfighter t1_j70u8oc wrote

Terrifying loneliness. Thank you for helping me best describe this.

2

SaulsAll t1_j6troy3 wrote

It would be a bit like looking at clouds from a plane. Only the things far away would have good definition. Other than that, I imagine it would be a lot like looking at the night sky from earth. You'd see lots of points of light - stars and galaxies, and some faint smudges of nebulae.

6

bureau44 t1_j6ujyjp wrote

True. It is almost nothing to look at. That colorful images of space we get from telescopes like "pillars of creation" are actually composite images gained at long exposures at different wavelengths from X-ray to radio. With you own eyes you will see a faint glow at best. Most stars will appear like a sun. More or less white blobs. Without reference you cannot tell their scale, even if they are thousand times bigger, without filters you cannot really tell their color. There might be an interesting light show close to the super massive blackholes with accretion discs and jets, but again, most of it is happening in gamma. The only hope is that life in Universe is so abundant, that you can just go to the space zoo looking at aliens.

3

Anonymous-USA t1_j6tug22 wrote

It depend upon which direction you go. At first it would be closer to the night sky you see along the equator where there’s no ambient city lights. But as you leave the Milky Way and travel towards Andromeda, you’d spend 2.5M years seeing little change, no stars, just dim galaxies. Yawn! 🥱 (because while you may live forever you still won’t travel faster than light)

If you head towards the center of the Milky Way, after about a hundred thousand years, you’ll approach the center and it will definitely be more populous and brighter and beautiful. But heaven forbid you should run into our supermassive black hole there, for you’ll live “forever” with nowhere to go!!! 🥱

5

jdmcnair t1_j6vhqbh wrote

No way! A black hole would be exciting for someone who couldn't die, one way or another. It may not be pleasant, but there's no way the spaghettification and the time dilation could work out to be boring, could there?

5

Anonymous-USA t1_j6vpwdp wrote

U ever go to Disneyworld or amusement park on a crowded day and the line takes two hours? Then you ride for 3 minutes?

You spend nearly a hundred thousand years to reach the black hole only to be spaghettified and gobbled up in a fraction of a second. Then hang in that state for all eternity. And this sounds like fun?

Sounds to me like one of the seven circles of hell. 🍻

2

jdmcnair t1_j6vrla5 wrote

Nowhere did I use the word "fun". I'd have to imagine being inside the black hole would be anything but fun. Definitely not boring, though.

1

ttystikk t1_j6tqrbw wrote

Humans have absolutely no idea what "forever" feels like.

The human body is frail and does not have the capability to see much of what's out in space- no surprise, since we evolved to live on Earth. Without instruments, you'll see a fair bit but you won't get nearly as much out of the sharp points of light from stars and faint smudges of nebulae as you would with, say, a telescope.

3

Private-Sun186 t1_j6u0ttf wrote

Imagine a lifeboat. Permanently anchor it at Point Nemo in the Pacific Ocean. Use whatever science you used to make yourself immortal to make the sea around you as far as you could see completely flat. Use that same science to eliminate the weather and exclude all wildlife and deorbited debris. Now climb into the lifeboat.

That would interest you longer than being in space would because you could at least dip your hands or feet into the water for a break from the sensory deprivation. But, it would only delay the slide into insanity, not stop it.

However, if you could safely land on planets, take off again, and voluntarily enter suspended animation or at least hibernate, that would be interesting.

3

FalseVaccum t1_j6u87he wrote

I actually have a reoccurring nightmare about this. I’m floating away from Earth into the void of space feeling panic as I drift further away from the only place I know in the universe. Knowing I will never see my friends or family again, loneliness completely envelops that causes a feeling of emptiness as vast as the deep space I am now imprisioned in………..Yeah na I’m good.

2

RO4DHOG t1_j6wrlbw wrote

Have you ever played Asteroids arcade game? It reveals the secret to space travel when you get to the edge of the screen. Space time happens, and you continue in the same direction. Forever. Until you meet 'The Saucer' or cannot steer clear of... Asteroid bits.

2

Varsect t1_j6y1kr6 wrote

>Let's pretend you could live forever or not die up there, what would it look like?

Then atoms wouldn't decay, so the universe would have to be immortal aka ∞. Kinda strange but for most of it, it would be empty space. Infact, most nebulae wouldn't even be visible as they are either visible in infrared or are only visible through filters from telescopes with far more resolution/seeing capabilities i.e Hubble. Only some Nebulae like the Tarantula nebula and the Orion and Rosette nebula would even be visible and nebulae are pretty sparse so it would still end up looking like empty space from the inside. You would barely just notice you were inside one. But hey, one quick tour through the galaxy wouldn't be so bad.

2

ferrel_hadley t1_j6tupya wrote

>Assuming you drifted long enough to get away from the sun, would it look like our night sky, with hundreds, thousands of shiny dots everywhere you looked?

And could we see galaxies, nebulas and other space phenomena or are they too far apart, too big or in a spectrum we can't perceive?

Dont really need to get away from the Sun. Once you are in shadow you do not recieve reflected back glare from dust in the air like happens on Earth. You will be in pretty dark space.

You can see Andromeda, a huge galaxy a couple of hundred light years away. And the Mangellic Clouds, satellite galaxies of our own. So you can see a couple of galaxies.

I dont think you can see nebula with the naked eye. They tend to be gas clouds that only resolve with telescopes.

1

MyNameIsVigil t1_j6u1elj wrote

No. That would be miserable. As I’m sure you know, space is mostly…empty space. I certainly don’t want to spend eternity in isolated emptiness.

1

orelsewhat t1_j6u3gxz wrote

You're wandering through space right now. Travel someplace with no light pollution, and look up. That's what the universe would look like if you were free falling in space.

If you could do that forever, you'd eventually notice the stars reddening and disappearing en masse, and assuming 'The Big Rip' doesn't happen, you'd spend eternity seeing nothing, not even yourself.

1

Training_Insect549 t1_j6u5tjd wrote

Oh yes. As a being of consciousness though. Less mass, 100 percent sass.

1

cantwejustbefiends t1_j6uc5sw wrote

If you want to know what it would look like for most of the time drifting through the universe, take away everything you currently see in the sky. There you go.

1

Cam599 t1_j6wpprp wrote

Unless you can travel much, much faster than the speed of light it would be very boring.

1

Varsect t1_j6y0vpk wrote

And fun fact, for you it would be instantenous. So even FTL is possible, it will be instantenous. But then again this is forever.

1

bitemy t1_j70iaic wrote

Bender always wanted to drift forever. But through the American Southwest.

1

Rustcuck t1_j6wutjw wrote

Would love to do that. Just me and my cats in a spaceship going throught space with no destination , far , far away from this virus called the human race 😂🤷‍♂️

0

Varsect t1_j6y11m8 wrote

And the said truth is that you are part of that virus from Earth headquarters.

2

Rustcuck t1_j6y5f33 wrote

Not at all. I have empathy for the other creatures of this planet it is why I became a vegan , it is why I wont even kill an ant , or a spider. A species that inflicts pain , torture , suffering upon the other creatures of the planet deserves extinction

0

Varsect t1_j6y752t wrote

I mean, you are electromagnetically polluting the environment each time you use any gadget and you have probably disposed of waste a lot of times over so I'd not say you are off the coast regardless of whether you are brutal because you certainly still are. Everyone is. This species sucks and it's bad for its own planet.

1

Rustcuck t1_j6y7v3o wrote

If I had a button that I could push to end the existence of our species , me included, I would do it. Difference between me and the other members of the species, however , is that I am aware of how terrible we are and that we should be extinct. That was all I was saying

−1