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Hundreds of years ago, mankind entered the road of scientific and technological development. With the help of science and technology, mankind quickly realized the dream of flying to the sky and stepped out of the earth to explore the universe. When we really walked out of the earth, we discovered that the earth is so small and the universe is so vast.
Standing in front of the universe, the speed that mankind was proud of in the past is nothing at all. We all know that in the age of the earth, the basic unit of distance is meters, and the basic unit of speed is meters per second. Navigating within the earth can achieve supersonic flight, which is already an incredible speed, and it only takes about 20 hours to circle the earth at such a speed.
But in the universe, the basic unit of distance is light-year, and the basic unit of speed is the speed of light. The speed of light can only be regarded as the speed of a tortoise in front of the cosmic scale. If human beings want to travel all over the galaxy and get out of the galaxy, we need to fly faster than light. Of course, such a speed is still too far away for human beings, and our current goal of speed struggle is to keep advancing towards the speed of light.
However, as the speed continues to increase, many people will have such a worry: the spacecraft will be hit by cosmic debris when the speed is too fast, then will such a thing happen in the universe? Let us listen to how scientists explain.
I believe that many friends know Einstein’s equations of relative and mass energy. According to these two theories, we understand that when the speed of an object continues to increase, its kinetic energy continues to increase. The faster the speed, the greater the energy the object obtains. And energy is the core of this universe. As long as the energy is large enough, nothing can’t be done.
Before the universe was born, it was an extremely powerful mass of energy. Later, the energy of the Big Bang was released in an instant, so the early basic elemental matter was formed, which later evolved into the current universe. It can be said that everything in our universe is transformed on the basis of energy, which shows how powerful energy is.
When a very ordinary and small object gains strong kinetic energy, the object has the ability to destroy the world. 65 million years ago, just an asteroid with a diameter of 10 kilometers hit the earth, causing the extinction of the dinosaurs, and the speed of the asteroid is nothing at all on the scale of the universe. Someone once had such a hypothesis that if a small bullet could reach the speed of light, then it would have the ability to destroy planets.
In the earth age, with the rapid development of science and technology, a large number of vehicles have also appeared, and the vehicle that people generally use to travel is cars. It is inevitable that all kinds of collision accidents will occur when a car is driving on the road. I believe my friends know that there will be traffic accidents every day. The faster the car, the more serious the consequences of a collision.
It is the speed of the car that has reached the universe, which is trivial. The speed of the artificial satellite is 7.9 kilometers per second, and the speed of Voyager 1 is about 17 kilometers per second. Once a collision occurs at such a fast speed, the consequences are very serious. If the spacecraft collides with a debris in space at such a speed, I believe that the spacecraft and the astronauts on the spacecraft will not be spared.
Therefore, some people worry that when human beings start the space age in the future, they will be hit by various debris in the universe. So will such a thing happen? In fact, our worries are superfluous. It does not mean that the collision between the spacecraft and the debris is impossible, but the probability is too small, so small that the probability of winning the first prize in a lottery ticket is much smaller.
The reason why the possibility of collisions in the universe is very small is that the space of the universe is widened. Maybe when we look up at the sky, we will see a lot of stars densely distributed in the night sky, and feel that they are all very close, but in fact, these stars are basically stars, and the distance between them is basically more than a few light years.
Even in the asteroid belt and the Kuiper belt of the solar system, the asteroids are very densely distributed, and Voyager 1 and Voyager 2 did not collide when they passed through them. We must know that humans know very little about the edge of the solar system, especially 40 years ago, when we basically knew nothing about the Kuiper Belt, how many asteroids there were and how they were distributed.
If the asteroids are very close, it is impossible for Voyager 1 and Voyager 2 to safely cross the Kuiper Belt into interstellar space. No luck crossing like the Voyager will hit asteroids or celestial debris, let alone human spacecraft. Therefore, we don’t have to worry about the spacecraft being hit by celestial debris during the cosmic voyage.
Of course, the speed of the spacecraft that humans can achieve is still very slow. If in the future it can achieve sub-light speed, light speed or even super-light flight, will the probability of being hit by cosmic debris increase a lot? In fact, the probability is still negligible. Once out of the solar system and into interstellar space, the density of celestial bodies there is even smaller. Many celestial bodies are separated by more than a few light-years. It may be within a few light-years. Only our spacecraft is sailing. .
In such interstellar space, the probability of you being hit by flying blindly will be very small. Of course, in the future interstellar era, we still have to consider the possibility of collisions in interstellar voyages, because once such a collision occurs, it will be completely finished. There is no possibility of rescue and survival, so in the future interstellar travel, we still need more powerful detection equipment.
This kind of detection equipment is equivalent to the radar of the earth age, which can detect the safety of the spacecraft within a certain range at any time. Powerful interstellar detection equipment may be able to detect conditions within the range of several light-years and tens of light-years. In this way, when the spacecraft is sailing, the radar detects the danger ahead, and we can avoid it in time to avoid collisions.
In addition, it is impossible for a spacecraft to travel in the universe at a very fast speed all the time. If it is in a star system or within a region of human activities, it still needs speed limit, just like in a city on the earth, a car The general speed limit is 30 kilometers per hour, and you can only move forward at a high speed.
The future interstellar era will inevitably be the same. In areas where human activities are intensive, spacecraft will also have restrictions, and there will also be very strict interstellar traffic laws. The purpose is to avoid collision accidents. The collision in the universe is much more terrifying than on the earth. Once it happens, it will be an irreversible disaster.