I've come to notice that because of the speed of light, communication and discovering etc will be restricted between planets and solar systems. E.g if let's say we want to find distant life in another solar system we can't see what's going on at the moment because the light that'll have reached us would've been very very old. To make matters worse, let's say in the far future we populate another planet, let's use Mars as an example, communication between Earth and Mars takes around 14 minutes or so, and that's at the speed of light.

My question is, is there any possible/theoretical way to work our way around this obstacle?

Where is our physicist?

*waiting for Alex intensifies*

(August 9, 2016 at 6:01 pm)RozKek Wrote: I've come to notice that because of the speed of light, communication and discovering etc will be restricted between planets and solar systems. E.g if let's say we want to find distant life in another solar system we can't see what's going on at the moment because the light that'll have reached us would've been very very old. To make matters worse, let's say in the far future we populate another planet, let's use Mars as an example, communication between Earth and Mars takes around 14 minutes or so, and that's at the speed of light.

My question is, is there any possible/theoretical way to work our way around this obstacle?

A martian in the future: wtf is this lag?, this is ranked ffs 

I now have a headache.

(August 9, 2016 at 6:01 pm)RozKek Wrote: I've come to notice that because of the speed of light, communication and discovering etc will be restricted between planets and solar systems.

Bingo. That's captain obvious and I'm always surprised by people wondering why we haven't found any alien civilizations as of yet. When some planet or star is a few million lightyears away we're looking at a time when humans didn't even walk this earth. Chances are, this planet doesn't even exist anymore.

(August 9, 2016 at 6:10 pm)abaris Wrote:

(August 9, 2016 at 6:01 pm)RozKek Wrote: I've come to notice that because of the speed of light, communication and discovering etc will be restricted between planets and solar systems.

Bingo. That's captain obvious and I'm always surprised by people wondering why we haven't found any alien civilizations as of yet. When some planet or star is a few million lightyears away we're looking at a time when humans didn't even walk this earth. Chances are, this planet doesn't even exist anymore.

Putin or Trump???

(August 9, 2016 at 6:10 pm)abaris Wrote:

(August 9, 2016 at 6:01 pm)RozKek Wrote: I've come to notice that because of the speed of light, communication and discovering etc will be restricted between planets and solar systems.

Bingo. That's captain obvious and I'm always surprised by people wondering why we haven't found any alien civilizations as of yet. When some planet or star is a few million lightyears away we're looking at a time when humans didn't even walk this earth. Chances are, this planet doesn't even exist anymore.

Except older civilizations out there could've sent plenty of messages that would've reached us by now.

We don't need to look that far out. Our Galaxy 'only' has a span of around 100,000 ly, which is still a hell of a walk. Millions of lightyears gets us out to our nearest large galactic neighbour, M31 at 2.2 million. There are about two thousand stars within 50 ly of Earth, about 15% of which could have planets with the proper conditions to qualify as life-sustaining., and about a dozen such potentials have been discovered. There could be tens of 'billions' (hate that term) in our Galaxy alone. No rush to go so far from home just yet.

What makes you think they are not walking among us?