Pushing humanity into the stars is certainly no cakewalk. There are light-years of interstellar space to bridge. Mind boggling energies are needed. We’ll have to comprehend years, decades or even centuries of time before we can even consider calling ourselves an interstellar race.
Are these concepts insurmountable? No. But, according to advanced propulsion expert and science/science fiction writer Les Johnson, we need a paradigm shift before these interstellar dreams become a reality. This isn’t necessarily a paradigm shift in technology, however. We need to change the way we think about time, space, distance and energy.
Most importantly, we have to start thinking big. Really big.
Speaking at the Eve Online players conference in Las Vegas, Nev., on Oct. 20, Johnson, who also serves as Deputy Manager for the Advanced Concepts Office at NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Ala., discussed one of the biggest and most profound searches of our age: the hunt for extrasolar planets, or exoplanets, in the ultimate hope of finding a bona fide second Earth.
In this golden age of exoplanetary studies, astronomers don’t have to rely on science fiction predictions, they can make a scientific estimate that there are 100-400 billion exoplanets in our galaxy. “How do we go? I wish that I could say that we could generate a wormhole and be there right away,” he added.
We live in a Universe where time is of little concern and the possibilities are, from our perspective, infinite. It’s up to us, as a species, to think big before we can ever hope of becoming masters of our own solar system, let alone the interstellar ocean.
Les Johnson is our Make EVE Real guest speaker for EVE Vegas. He is a scientist, an author of both science fiction and popular science books, and the Deputy Manager of NASA's Advanced Concepts Office at the Marshall Space Flight Center. In his presentation titled 'Going Interstellar', Les will discuss how mankind might someday visit and settle other habitable planets - using technologies that don't violate the known laws of physics.
