Why do astronomers think that even faster than light can fly to the edge of the universe?
After reading it, you will understand
This is Voyager 1, which has been flying in space for almost half a century, it is currently 24.5 billion kilometers away from the Earth, we can catch it in just over 20 hours from the Earth at the speed of light, and in a year it will be able to fly out of the Oort cloud into interstellar space, while Voyager 1 will take 30,000 years to fly out of the Oort cloud.
With the speed of light of 300,000 kilometers per second, we can reach Proxima Centauri, the home of the Trisolarans, in 4.2 years, and in 100,000 years we will be able to cross the entire Milky Way, 2.54 million years will reach the Andromeda Galaxy, and 93 billion years will be able to travel through the entire observable universe.
If you want to explore the entire universe in a short time, the only way is to exceed the speed of light, Einstein's general theory of relativity predicted the wormhole, is a natural faster-than-light channel, theoretically the wormhole can connect two galaxies separated by tens of millions of light years, by space-time folding, so as to achieve the effect of exceeding the speed of light in a short time.
In addition to wormholes, faster-than-light spaceships driven by warp bubbles can theoretically be realized, because the spacecraft wrapped in warp bubbles does not move itself, but is a warp bubble in space that flies faster than light, which just bypasses the limitations of special relativity, but even so, scientists believe that we cannot reach the boundary of the universe, let alone fly out of the universe.
Because our universe is a sphere, to be precise, a closed four-dimensional supersphere, which belongs to the bounded and boundless model.
In this case, no matter how fast we are, no matter how straight our direction is, we will eventually fly around the universe and return to the original point, just like Magellan's circumnavigation around the world, this kind of superluminal speed limited to three dimensions cannot be separated from the universe, a four-dimensional supersphere, so there is nothing to talk about flying out of the universe.
The bubble universe theory believes that in the four-dimensional space of higher dimensions, our universe is only one of several cosmic bubbles, and the other cosmic bubbles also originated from the Big Bang, but the physical laws in them may be different from our universe, but all this can only be seen clearly after human civilization breaks through the limitations of the space dimension.
For astronomers at this stage, what they are most concerned about is not the speed of light or the speed of light, but the application of controlled nuclear fusion in space propulsion technology, because the current chemical power propulsion, the efficiency is too low, the speed is not even one percent of the speed of light, and if the controlled nuclear fusion technology can be applied to space in the future, helium 3 on the moon and hydrogen on Jupiter can become the energy supply of spacecraft.
Ideally, the speed of the controllable nuclear fusion spacecraft can reach at least 1% of the speed of light, that is, 3,000 kilometers per second, although this speed cannot explore the Milky Way with a diameter of 100,000 light years, but it is more than enough in the solar system, and human civilization will also become a real first-level civilization at this time, and begin to move towards a second-level civilization.
Perhaps tens of thousands of years later, human civilization will really be able to master the construction technology of the Dyson sphere, turn the sun into our exclusive energy source, and expand within the galaxy based on it.