Warning: Traveling Close to Light Speed May Be Harmful to Your Health

No doubt a lot of readers of this blog are Star Trek fans waiting for the day when we finally publish about a real life medical tricorder that can non-invasively diagnose just about any disease. In the interim, as we anticipate the release of this device, some other issues need to be sorted out before we embark on interstellar space travel. A major roadblock to that, just presented at a meeting of the American Physical Society, is the theoretical work of Dr. William Edelstein from the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine. Edelstein claims that near-light speed space travel may actually be impossible due to the detrimental effect that randomly floating hydrogen atoms would have on the spacecraft and astronauts inside. Even if we were able to accelerate a spaceship to near-light speed, Edelstein claims that hydrogen atoms, or as he calls them “unavoidable space mines,” would penetrate the hull of the ship and deliver a radiation dose that not even water bears could withstand. According to the NewScientist, in order to travel the distance to the center of our galaxy, a spaceship would have to be moving at 99.999998 percent of the speed of light. Protons moving that fast (everything being relative, of course) would have an energy of 7 teraelectron volts, right about what the Large Hadron Collider can generate. At this speed, Edelstein calculates that a 10 centimeter thick aluminum shield would reduce that energy by less than one percent, meaning that anyone inside will turn into a ready source of subatomic particles.
Of course this study doesn’t address the effectiveness of raising shields, the nature of warp drive, and the winning spirit of the crew on board. In short, we’ll keep on dreaming.
More from the NewScientist: Starship pilots: speed kills, especially warp speed…
(hat tip: Gizmodo)
Image: bass_nroll