Landing on a rogue planet? Humans are looking for new ways to migrate across the stars

Recently, American scholars proposed an idea for interstellar migration: using free-floating rogue planets as a means of transportation to help humans explore deep space. Although humans are not yet capable of making this idea a reality and there is still a lot of work to be done to realize this plan, bold imagination is after all the first step for humans to achieve interstellar migration and interstellar travel. So, in addition to common spaceships, rockets and rogue planets, are there any better means of transportation and ways to achieve interstellar migration?

Natural wonders help

Let's go back to the American scholars' imagination and first clarify what a "wandering planet" is. The current astrophysics system believes that any planet is formed in a star system and revolves around a star. However, once a planet encounters an accident, the gravitational pull of the star is not enough to keep it in the star system, that is, when the star's gravity is not enough to act as a centripetal force, the planet will be "thrown" out of the star system and become a wandering planet with no home.

Scientists first discovered rogue planets in 2011. Since then, more and more rogue planets have been observed in the Milky Way. It is reported that scientists have re-estimated that the number of rogue planets in the Milky Way may exceed 400 billion, which is undoubtedly an astronomical number.

I believe many of you have watched the Chinese science fiction blockbuster "The Wandering Earth". The movie tells the story of the human race encountering the dilemma of the sun evolving into a red giant and swallowing the earth, and having to install a large planetary engine on the earth to propel the earth to a new star system. Once the earth in the movie escapes the gravitational pull of the sun, it is a veritable "artificial wandering planet". Since many wandering planets are much smaller than the earth, it is relatively easier to move them in space. No wonder American scholars have come up with the idea of ​​using wandering planets for interstellar migration.

In fact, by utilizing natural wonders, humans may be able to “take shortcuts” in interstellar migration, such as through the “space-time tunnel” – a wormhole.

Since Einstein's general theory of relativity was accepted, wormholes have been theoretically proven to be possible, so they are also called Einstein-Rosen bridges. In theory, wormholes are "narrow tunnels" in the universe that connect different time and space. Humans can use wormholes to teleport or "time jump" on a cosmic scale. For interstellar travel, traveling through a wormhole is undoubtedly the fastest, and it has become one of the most popular ways of interstellar migration in science fiction works.

However, humans face many challenges in traveling through wormholes, and the most important part is to keep the wormhole open and stable. Studies have shown that negative matter can keep wormholes open and stable for a long time, but there are still many unknowns, and humans still have a long way to go.

Spacecraft can be very sci-fi

Scientific researchers will not always think of taking advantage of natural wonders, but will work hard to develop new manned spacecraft, which will always be the fundamental way of interstellar travel, and dazzling "future technology" is indispensable.

Solar sail spacecraft "travels by light" and is a spacecraft that uses the pressure of sunlight to propel it. Humans on Earth may be puzzled by the pressure of sunlight because the impact force of photons seems to be negligible: the pressure of sunlight per square meter is not as heavy as an ant, and the pressure of sunlight per square kilometer is only 9 Newtons. But in space without air resistance, the pressure of sunlight is completely different. According to scientific estimates, a solar sail spacecraft with a diameter of 2,000 meters can allow a spacecraft to move at a speed of 240,000 kilometers per hour, which is about 5 times faster than the fastest rocket propulsion today.

Quantum technology has become popular in recent years, and one of its possible applications in the aerospace field is the quantum starship, which uses black hole "evaporation" as a propulsion force.

It turns out that near the event horizon of a black hole, the formation and destruction of particles and antiparticles are significantly accelerated because the black hole has gravitational energy added to space and time itself. In theory, it is possible to obtain huge propulsion kinetic energy with the help of electromagnetic effects. Studies have shown that if atomic-level micro black holes are "made" at the rear of a spacecraft such as a quantum starship, and their energy output and emission are used to replace existing engines, it will be an efficient and reliable guarantee for traveling through the vast universe. This is not a fantasy, but one of the few interstellar navigation schemes based on existing technical principles.

In the foreseeable future, sending spacecraft into space can only rely on rockets. However, the potential for improving the current rocket propellants is limited, so it is necessary to use new ones, such as antimatter.

People always think that antimatter is mysterious and difficult to understand. In fact, antimatter is composed of antiprotons, antineutrons and positrons, and has properties opposite to normal matter, including the charge and spin of antimatter particles are opposite to those of normal matter. This means that when matter particles and antimatter particles attract and collide with each other, a large amount of energy is immediately released. According to scientific calculations, the energy generated by the complete annihilation of only 1 gram of antimatter with an equal amount of matter is equivalent to the explosion of 3 Hiroshima atomic bombs, which shows how powerful it is. If humans can discover and manufacture enough controllable antimatter and apply such energy to rockets, the thrust generated will be quite amazing, and rockets and spacecraft can even move close to the speed of light. This may be the next technological leap in space travel.

There is a basis for "super-time and space teleportation"

If you think the idea of ​​quantum starship is not big enough, you can imagine the "instant transfer across time and space" in the game - quantum transmission.

After several particles interact with each other, they have integrity. If one particle changes, the other particle will also change accordingly, no matter how far away they are. This is called the action at a distance of quantum entanglement. At present, scientists use quantum transmission technology to safely and efficiently transmit quantum information with the help of satellite networks, fiber optic networks, etc. In the future, when humans enter the quantum age, they will not only be able to transmit energy and information over long distances, but may also be able to "instantly transfer" people or spacecraft to a distance of light years away. By that time, humans may be able to quickly reach another planet or another space with the help of quantum transmission, and interstellar migration will become extremely simple.

"Transient transfer" may be too sci-fi, so let's be more open-minded and pay attention to the warp engine. It is also called the curvature engine, which is a superluminal propulsion system, but the relevant theory does not allow "instantaneous" travel between two points. Don't be discouraged. Based on the description of science fiction works, Mexican scientist Alcubierre has analyzed the possibility of superluminal flight under Einstein's theory of relativity. As long as the curvature of space-time is compressed or expanded to cause "space-time fluctuations", interstellar travel is expected to be realized.

The sea of ​​stars is the eternal dream of mankind. Although the current level of technology is still far from interstellar travel, scientists have not stopped exploring, and there are endless ideas and research on interstellar migration methods. I believe that as human technology continues to make breakthroughs, one day ordinary people will also be able to travel in the universe, to the fascinating deep space, and to take a look at alien planets.