From: LARRY KLAES (ljk4_at_msn.com)
Date: Tue Sep 13 2005 - 15:05:56 UTC
astro-ph/0509268 [abs, ps, pdf, other] :
Title: The Long-Term Future of Space Travel
Authors: Jeremy S. Heyl
Comments: 4 pages, 3 figures
The fact that we apparently live in an accelerating universe places
limitations on where humans might visit. If the current energy density of
the universe is dominated by a cosmological constant, a rocket could reach a
galaxy observed today at a redshift of 1.7 on a one-way journey or merely
0.65 on a round trip. Unfortunately these maximal trips are impractical as
they require an infinite proper time to traverse. However, calculating the
rocket trajectory in detail shows that a rocketeer could nearly reach such
galaxies within a lifetime (a long lifetime admittedly -- about 100 years).
For less negative values of $w$ the maximal redshift increases becoming
infinite for $w\geq -1/3$.
http://arxiv.org/abs/astro-ph/0509268
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