_rpd comments on Estimating the probability of human extinction - Less Wrong

5 Post author: philosophytorres 17 February 2016 04:19PM

You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.

Comments (33)

You are viewing a single comment's thread. Show more comments above.

Comment author: _rpd 19 February 2016 06:59:08PM *  1 point [-]

Naively, the required condition is v + dH > c, where v is the velocity of the spaceship, d is the distance from the threat and H is Hubble's constant.

However, when discussing distances on the order of billions of light years and velocities near the speed of light, the complications are many, not to mention an area of current research. For a more sophisticated treatment see user Pulsar's answer to this question ...

http://physics.stackexchange.com/questions/60519/can-space-expand-with-unlimited-speed/

... in particular the graph Pulsar made for the answer ...

http://i.stack.imgur.com/Uzjtg.png

... and/or the Davis and Lineweaver paper [PDF] referenced in the answer.

Comment author: SoerenE 19 February 2016 08:16:47PM 0 points [-]

Wow. It looks like light from James' spaceship can indeed reach us, even if light from us cannot reach the spaceship.

Comment author: _rpd 19 February 2016 09:39:18PM 1 point [-]

Yes, until the distance exceeds the Hubble distance of the time, then the light from the spaceship will red shift out of existence as it crosses the event horizon. Wiki says that in around 2 trillion years, this will be true for light from all galaxies outside the local supercluster.