How could we travel several light years from earth, millions of millions of miles away? One light-year is the distance that light travels at 186,000 miles per second for a whole earth year.
The newly discovered "earthlike" planet called KOI-456.04 is about 3,000 light years or about 6 trillion miles from earth.
Yet we must remember that the human life span is not very long, nor even close enough, to how long it would take to get to the nearest earthlike planet, in what many scientists consider an impossible speed.
In addition and customary to support human life anywhere, what would we eat? How could we communicate, and more practically, how could we use the same toilet over and over again for years without cleaning it? That would create quite a stink at NASA, PU!
Most of us might then say, "Forget it. I'll walk to the nearest solar system supermarket and buy some heavenly food and leave all this space travel to cosmonauts, astronauts, or moon monkeys from the Zodiac Zoo. But then, even bananas will spoil in just a few days.
Bananas are the staple for most NASA scientists
(NASA) "A team of transatlantic scientists, using reanalyzed data from NASA's Kepler space telescope, has discovered an Earth-size exoplanet orbiting its star. The star, called Kepler-160, has a habitable zone, meaning the area around a star where a rocky planet could support liquid water."
Astrophysicists and astronomers have found many such earthlike planets possibly able to support human life. I wonder though, if there are human like beings already there? In that case would we be the aliens?
Should we all get ready; put on space helmets, tuck in our space suits, and pack a big lunch? What's the best outer space food? Maybe Venus schnitzel and spudniks? Whatever it is, be sure it is easily digested or you might develop asteroids or even have problems with Uranus.
(NASA) "This newly revealed world is only 1.06 times larger than our own planet. Also, the amount of starlight it receives from its host star is 75% of the amount of light Earth receives from our Sun - meaning the exoplanet's temperature may be similar to our planet's, as well. But unlike Earth, it orbits a red dwarf."
''This intriguing, distant world gives us even greater hope that a second Earth lies among the stars, waiting to be found," said Thomas Zurbuchen, associate administrator of NASA's Science Mission Directorate in Washington. 'The data gathered by missions like Kepler and our Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS) will continue to yield amazing discoveries as the science community refines its abilities to look for promising planets year after year'."
But we have to ask what are the taxpayers getting for their hard-earned cash? A pie in the sky? Or maybe a Planetary Ponzi scheme, a scam which NASA is best known for.
I'm not saying this space flight to earth-like planets isn't possible, but not with our flesh and blood crumbling bodies. And some physicists conclude, though not quite accurately, that our body's mass would tend to infinity if we could travel at the speed of light or even close to that.
Can you imagine going for your annual physical examination and your doctor tells you that you have gained too much weight? Your weight, he tells you, is now infinity and your body mass index cannot be measured on the chart anymore. Why you'd weigh almost as much as Donald Trump!
So if we start today and travel at the speed of light, 186,000 miles per second, then we could reach this planet in only 3,000 years. I can't imagine celebrating my 2,000-year-old birthday on the way, maybe with a piece of Martian Meringue pie served to me by dancing Moon Maids.
Sorry folks, but consider that all this distant space travel may only be a way for NASA and the astrophysical elitists to get more earthly money which is what they really are looking for. But, I do hope we find these far distant planets, but as Mrs. Shaktiman always says; "Don't count your eggs before the chickens hatch".
On a more somber note, I went shopping a few years back to a Wal-Mart, here on earth. While shopping there, I bumped into a very nice fellow in the same aisle. I had my shopping cart but he did not have one, nor was he buying anything. I found it strange. Was he from some other planet?
We began talking and soon enough our conversation turned to mathematics and theoretical physics.
Now everybody knows that mathematics, Quantum Mechanics, the Theory of Relativity, and astrophysics is what Wal-Mart customers from America's rural farmland talk about with other customers and farmers as they shop at Wal-Mart. Many of these earth bound and often poor rural farmers we may assume have even tried to modify and engineer their farm tractors so that they can take off from their barn and orbit the earth. How NASIAN of them.
Shockingly, it turned out that my Wal-Mart acquaintance was an aeronautical engineer and not a farmer and had or was working for NASA.. I informed him, and it appeared he already knew that I was working on ways to visualize higher dimensions in vector spaces and algebraic topology.
This field which I called "multi-dimensional iconography", is a non-existing academic field to date yet it is an integral part of many branches of mathematics and physics. Higher mathematics and physics can't be done without it.
We see in some science fiction movies, that space craft may enter "other dimensions" of Space/Time. We are never told what that means or what happens besides that it takes us to other worlds, often where beautiful women prance about in skimpy space suits and high heels.
But after my newly found friend posed many questions on how I would describe this multi-dimensional phenomenon as a legitimate look into unseen regions of space-time, at least according to mathematics and physics, the ideas became clearer. .
Most mathematics and physics books try to show our 3 dimensional real space moving through time or some other nebulous space. They describe this movement sometimes as the 4th Dimension and label it as Time. This movement is like taking an ice cube or a ball and using arrows that are drawn in several out going directions to depict the motion through space that represents time itself.
How can this be?
The scientific scuttlebutt is that there is no "absolute" time but we can represent it as the 4th coordinate, "T", placed after the 3 "S" coordinates that represent space and voila you see 4 dimensions. (S1, S2, S3, T). But really, you don't see a darn thing.
That is why the great French mathematician and physicist de Broglie, if I can paraphrase him, said; "Mathematics and physics are not something you can understand, you just sort of get used to it".
So, we are left with only orbiting the earth, or going to the International Space Station, or maybe a few near by journeys, but no cigar. No earthlike distant exoplanet is reachable at this time, if ever, for our human species. Yet the Space agencies tell us they can "freeze dry" astronauts in a clear plastic coffin for centuries, then pour water on them and voila, they come back to life less shriveled than before.
Unless of course we are using what is today a science fiction and change dimensions during space flight and then change back to this space-time reality. Very funny. In fact I should stop putting humor in my articles and go to study comedy at NASA's school for Cosmic Comedians.
I made the same mistakes, drawing these higher dimensions. Arrows up and down, arrows all around an object going out in every direction, computer graphics and then giant sweeping arrows coordinating with smaller ones as the object came out of a portal in outer space.
The more arrows I used to represent this movement through time dimensions, the more it looked as though I had been attacked by American Indians with bows and arrows. I felt as though I traveled back in time and finally understood General Custer at his last stand.
Now back to the Wal-Mart outer space aisle symposium on agricultural astrophysics. I asked my aeronautical engineer acquaintance to look down the Wal-Mart aisle. I looked down the aisles and asked him to consider the shelf wall that held to food items as representing 3 dimensions (length, width, and height) or a smaller piece of these 3 dimensions.
The items on the shelves we might consider as projections from a 4th dimension or likewise our own movement up and down the aisles as "a" time coordinate. I went on and on with the analogies such as my motion running up the aisle and pointing to all the dimensions represented by Wal-Mart itself or even considering movable shelves.
Oddly, he looked at me and also started running up and down the aisle and asking "you mean this" And we would discuss it all. But in reality the two of us looked like escapees from the state lunatic asylum.
Of course we humans are so bound to our four-dimensional life that we can't see the forest for the trees. Our limitations of apprehension are far too limited even in the lower dimensions that represent the line, a plane, and a solid object. Even the existential interplay of life and death may be viewable outcomes.
To my surprise, he got the idea and in addition, that describing or visualizing only a 4th dimension was almost impossible. I have had students working for NASA, mostly with the medical aspects of space flight. They have no idea of how higher dimensional mathematics affects their work.
No nation on earth has moved into this dimensional change vis-à-vis space travel, but the mathematics for doing it is there now and has been for a very long time. Mathematicians do it all the time, on paper.
Are there more examples of entering such higher time and space levels? Some mathematicians in other mathematical "spaces" say yes. Einstein had very innovative ideas on the structure of this continuous Time-Space reality, but his mathematics was not the best. Some others did better work notably students of David Hilbert like Hermann Weyl. Hilbert, the great German mathematician, even postulated infinite dimensions that removed many limitations on motion.
And hence, we come to the newest of fields in the Quantum, where consciousness itself is looked at in relation to objective reality instead of simple perception of subjective views or empirical data from a telescope.
Add to this the mathematics of blending imaginary numbers with real numbers (called Complex Analysis) or even Artificial Intelligence as described by the father of computer science, Alan Turing and then "hocus pocus dominocus", we introduce metaphysics and mysticism into the equations. I suppose one could call this "slight of mind".
But both Russia and the United States have worked on similar ideas for decades. I see that it is Russia at this time, and they may or may not know it, that is in the lead in the areas I have discussed.
Turing informs us; "We can only see a short distance ahead, but we can see plenty there that needs to be done."
Parapsychology, out of body, near death investigations, etc., have been considered both within and outside of science. Yet, I recall Jesus saying; " Heaven and earth will pass away, but My words shall not pass away". (Matthew 24:35-36)
The word "words" (λόγοι) may not be translated even by scholars so well, The original Greek word "logoi" (λόγοι, or words) may also mean laws, or even formulas. So as one travels in Space-Time, do our heavens and earth pass away?
The laws of mathematics and physics depend also on rigor, that is, when developing them one must analyze with complete logic and leave no stone unturned.
Finally, how do we get back to earth if necessary? Is it not said that the metaphysics of today may be the physics of tomorrow?
Get your trampolines ready everybody and either way you can forget about the Big Bang and get ready for The Big Bounce.
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