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No. Slower than light travel will still enable a smaller amount of colonization of the local area. Where if we do anything that destroys the planet, that's kinda putting all your eggs in one basket. If that goes catastrophically wrong, as things sometimes do, then everything gets fucked up.
It's just an unnecessary risk.
Yes.
Why not extend our environmental destruction into the farthest reaches of the universe? The heat death of the universe will be humanity extracting every last bit of energy from it to sell ads for the most trivial bullshit imaginable.
I love the idea of our expansion being dependant on destroying our own home planet.
I'd nuke all of you in a second to get to travel the stars. Maybe carve "Later, bitches!" Into siberia with my motherfucking space lasers.
I like the way you think.
Oddly specific... What are you doing OP? Should we be worried? Honestly "faster than light" travel is already too generic: do you mean going actually FTL or breaking the space barrier with wormholes or space displacement shenanigans that "look like" FTL? That said, Earth destroyed in a few decades because of the research or the PRODUCTION of such method? A little bit of context would made answering this question way more interesting...
The question is to make us think about the moral and practical aspects of advancing technology, leaving room for different interpretations to encourage diverse discussions. It's like a 'what if' scenario, helping us explore the consequences of scientific progress without prescribing a single answer.
Would you sell your house just to buy a car?
Would you sell your house for a magic flying car?
Would you sell your house to be ejected into unknown and never have chance to go back?
I don't have a house.
And you have no magic.
Not if I have good reason to believe I won't get another one like the old any time soon.
No. While faster than light travel might secure the human race's survival and intergalactic presence, is the human race more important than our planet? I don't think so..
While I value human life, we're just hairless apes that are both too smart for our own good and still incredibly simple-minded and tribal. Our importance is self-importance. What is the benefit of human-kind for the universe? So far we're making existence worse for other species. We're already destroying our planet.
Emotionally and selfishly I want us to continue going, but I think our existence has been far more detrimental than neutral, and certainly far from a positive impact on nature. We're parasites to this planet, and I think a life-supporting planet is more important than the selfish and detrimental endeavors carried out by one species.
The Earth is more important than our selfish asses.
weβre just hairless apes that are both too smart for our own good
By that same logic the Earth is just a rock floating through space with self replicating molecules on it. What makes it any more or less important than us? It's all rather meaningless, no?
We're a virus on Earth, but just like viruses don't care about invading and killing the host - why should we care about killing the Earth? Don't misunderstand me - I think we should try and stop climate change from getting out of control from a practical standpoint. We're stuck here so rising temperatures will have serious long term impacts on our global society. But I think this idolization of nature argument falls flat - feels almost religious.
Main reason for me is that we are just as part of nature as anything else. To assume otherwise is arrogance.
What is the benefit of nature? Worth and importance are intrinsically human judgements, the universe doesn't give a damn about birds and plants any more than it does about us.
If you value life in general, humanity is the best chance life on earth has of ever getting off planet earth and into the galaxy before the sun dies.
No way.
Earth is the homeland, it's the botanical gardens, the tribal reservation, it comes first.
Now, if you could do it on, say, mars, absolutely.
Yea, FTL travel implies that we have somewhere else to go.
Now while I assume there are plenty of other habitable planets out there, strictly speaking we donβt know that.
Personally no. There's so many other obstacles to overcome with populating other planets that getting there isn't worth destroying the only one we have.
If we had others then maybe.
I don't think a civilization which would destroy their home with the single-minded goal of spreading throughout the universe in the blink of an eye should be allowed to spread beyond their local star system at all. Maybe re-evaluate after giving them a few centuries to mature.
Why? There's no intrinsic value in this one random space rock, especially if we have access to the technologies to use others
Considering it's the only known one to have life on it...
Yes... that's actually quite a bit of intrinsic value that may not exist on any other planet.
I mean surely the research itself isn't actually what destroys the earth, but rather the actual use of such an FTL drive, no? So just research the fundamentals, run a few tests outside the edge of the solar system with unmanned probes, and keep the tech in our pockets in case we actually have a reason to evacuate the planet
Brontaroc will feast on that passenger list.
FTL in general and FTL that can evacuate entire planets worth of even a single species are very, very different scales of technology.
No. FTL travel does not mean we have the means to transport billions of people and the entire ecology around us including specific conditions of Earth's orbit in terms of temperature, day, month and year length and many other parameters each of those plants, animals,... requires to another place within a few decades.
Where would we go? We don't know of any other planets that we could easily live on.
Kepler-452b for starters but with FTL travel we could probably find quite a few more
Unless FTL travel is significantly faster than light, it's usefulness would be limited. Kepler-452 is located about 1,800 light-years from Earth, which means it would take light 1,800 years to travel that distance. Even if our theoritical FTL travel was twice as fast as light, it would still take us 900 years to get there...
Once we get there, it is still unlikely that the planet would be habitable for humans. Quoting Wikipedia:
However, it is unknown if it is entirely habitable, as it is receiving slightly more energy than Earth and could be subjected to a runaway greenhouse effect.
There are closer exoplanets (closest one we know about is Proxima Centauri b), but even those are likely to be poorly suited for humans since we evolved to live specifically on Earth.
1800 years as observed from someone else watching the light travel. However, when travelling at c, you experience no time. From a photon's point of view, no time passes between when it is emitted and when it is absorbed.
Earth isn't travelling with you though so Earth would be toast long before you arrive.
Where are we going to get the infinite energy required to move faster than light? ONSHORE WIND FARMS?!?!
That's a very specific scenario.
I would say no. But there's going to be a lot of factors that go into that decision. That I don't have the data for.
I think it's far more likely The Earth is going to live just long enough for us to have multiple planets colonized. Once we have multiple planets destroying a single planet becomes a viable military strategy. So that's when the earth will die.
Have you been playing Starfield? This is related to something in the game.
If we'd ever discover FTL travel, the universe and causality would be broken. Earth might as well be a dragon at this point.
I feel like, maybe, you just watched Pandorum. As long as we don't let Dennis Quaid drive the ship, we should be okay.
No with just the speed of light, yes with a speed higher than that of light, so beyond space and time.
You'd have to explain how it will be destroyed. Since FTL allows for time travel it seems like any such crisis could be averted with FTL travel.
If I remember correctly, this is an element of the three body problem series. Essentially some type of warp drive would leave long term effects on the surrounding space-time.
Sort of like nuclear fallout, but at the solar system level. Basically to use it safely, you would need to travel at normal lower than light speed to some empty place and then from there use the FTL warp drive.
That's ok. Like taking your car to the track.