Faster Than Light
358. FASTER THAN LIGHT - A black ink and black color pencil drawing on an 11 x 14 size coquille board. It appears in the paperback, "Destinies, Vol.2, No.1".
My drawing, which is a takeoff of Rodin's sculpture, "The Thinker," illustrates a science article in this paperback that deals with the theory that the speed of light can not be exceeded. In space (a vacuum), the speed of light is approximately 186,000 miles per second.
The importance of this subject has to do with man's eventual need to venture into deep space in order to survive. In the course of time a major asteroid impact with Earth is inevitable, making it uninhabitable for human life. Already in Earth's past a meteor struck it and is credited with ending the Dinosaur Age. And, because our sun will not sustain life on Earth indefinitely, our destiny, literally, is in the stars.
But the stars are so far away that using "miles" as a measure of distance between them is impractical, so the term "light year" was created to measure the distances. To understand the term, imagine you are traveling at the speed of light from Star A, heading to Star B, and it takes you one year to get there. The "distance" therefore, between the two stars is one Light Year". Which calculated in miles is 6,000,000,000,000 miles. (the number of seconds in a year x 186,000)
Today, if we sent a spaceship that has a "rocket engine" headed for the nearest star, "Proxima Centauri," which is 4.2 light years away, it would take many thousands of years to get there! Since most stars are hundreds, even thousands of light years away, then getting to them seems impossible using a rocket engine that travels at 1/10,000 the speed of light. So, we have to invent a "Space-Drive" device capable of breaking the "light year barrier". And that is the problem my "Thinker" in the illustration is working on. Do not underestimate the ingenuity of man, as the saying goes, "necessity is the mother of invention".
My drawing, which is a takeoff of Rodin's sculpture, "The Thinker," illustrates a science article in this paperback that deals with the theory that the speed of light can not be exceeded. In space (a vacuum), the speed of light is approximately 186,000 miles per second.
The importance of this subject has to do with man's eventual need to venture into deep space in order to survive. In the course of time a major asteroid impact with Earth is inevitable, making it uninhabitable for human life. Already in Earth's past a meteor struck it and is credited with ending the Dinosaur Age. And, because our sun will not sustain life on Earth indefinitely, our destiny, literally, is in the stars.
But the stars are so far away that using "miles" as a measure of distance between them is impractical, so the term "light year" was created to measure the distances. To understand the term, imagine you are traveling at the speed of light from Star A, heading to Star B, and it takes you one year to get there. The "distance" therefore, between the two stars is one Light Year". Which calculated in miles is 6,000,000,000,000 miles. (the number of seconds in a year x 186,000)
Today, if we sent a spaceship that has a "rocket engine" headed for the nearest star, "Proxima Centauri," which is 4.2 light years away, it would take many thousands of years to get there! Since most stars are hundreds, even thousands of light years away, then getting to them seems impossible using a rocket engine that travels at 1/10,000 the speed of light. So, we have to invent a "Space-Drive" device capable of breaking the "light year barrier". And that is the problem my "Thinker" in the illustration is working on. Do not underestimate the ingenuity of man, as the saying goes, "necessity is the mother of invention".
