Multiple Fractal Cosmos timelines?

[Joao_Luz (João Luz)]

Does this mean we don’t consider interstellar colonies, or that we think they won’t happen until 2200 or something? If they exist, we might say that they exist, but assume that they won’t have a lot of influence on what happens in the solar system.

I think we can have a few interstestellar colonies in very nearby stars, as long as we don’t make the project too galaxy spanning.

I think interstellar colonies would be feasible by 2200, with technologies similar to those depicted in Charles Stross’s novel Accelerando. A small starship could bring seeding nanobots to a astronomical body in another star system and start building a colony there. The “inhabitants” of the starship would need to be uploads or AIs.

Wouldn’t time dilation make centuries pass at the solar system during the decades that the ship would take to get there.

I’ve read the novel and I loved it, but I never really unserstood that part.

[Radivis (Michael Hrenka)]

Wouldn’t time dilation make centuries pass at the solar system during the decades that the ship would take to get there.

No, time dilation simply makes time pass faster for the travellers. So, their subjective travel time would be greatly reduced when travelling close to the speed of light. From the point of view of Earth the travel would still only take about as long as light takes to move from Earth to the target location.

So, if the travellers go to Alpha Centauri with 0.9 c (90% speed of light), they would take about 5 years from the point of Earth. Their subjective travel time would be reduced too much less (perhaps 1 year or so). Not that that actually makes much of a difference for uploads and AGIs who do not age.

Edit: Ok, it’s more like 2 years