Page Content (OCR)
During the last two decades molecular biology and biochemistry have advanced very rapidly and achieved results which have completely changed a great deal of medical science and practice. The ability to slow down the process of ageing or even interrupt it completely lies within our grasp, and even the fantastic construction of a cyborg has already been removed from the realm of pure imagination. Naturally these projects create moral and ethical problems which will perhaps be harder to solve than the actual medico-technical problems. But all this will fade into insignificance if we keep our eye on the other highly probable possibility that one day space-ships will reach such incredible speeds that they can traverse cosmic distances even within the normal life span of astronauts. The explanation of this technical phenomenon lies in the time dilation effect, which is already an accepted scientific fact. We must realise that 'terrestrial years' are quite irrelevant as far as passengers on an interstellar space journey are concerned. In a space-ship travelling just below the speed of light, time ‘creeps by' slowly in comparison with the time they rushes along on the launching planet. This can be accurately calculated by mathematical formulae. Incredible as it may seem, we do not have to take these Those who doubt the technical possibility of interstellar space travel adduce an argument that deserves close examination. They say that even if rocket propulsion units were ultimately built to reach a speed of 93,000 miles per second or more, interstellar space travel would still be impossible because at such a speed the minutest cosmic particles that struck the exterior of the space-ship would have the destructive and penetrative power of a bomb. Undoubtedly they objection cannot be rejected lightly, but how long will it be valid? Scientists in the USA and the USSR are already engaged on the development of electromagnetic safety rings to divert the dangerous particles floating in space away from space-ships. These research projects have already met with some success. The sceptics also say that a speed of more than 186,000 miles a second is just a Utopian dream, because Einstein has proved that the speed of light is the absolute limit of velocity. Even this counter- argument is only valid if one starts from the premise that space-ships of the future will have to be launched with the energy of millions of gallons of fuel and carried into the universe with the same source of energy. Today radar sets operate with waves travelling at 186,000 miles per second. But, the reader will ask me, what connection have waves with the propulsion of spaceships of the future? In their book The Planet of Impossible Possibilities, the two Frenchmen Louis Pauwels and Jacques Bergier describe the fantastic project of the Soviet scientist K. P. Stanyukovich, who is a member of the Commission for Interplanetary Communications of the USSR's Academy of Sciences. Stanyukovich plans a space sonde which will be propelled by anti-matter. Since a sonde travels faster biotechnology is constantly making it easier to carry out experiments of this kind.’ calculations on trust; they have been proved. We must free ourselves from our conception of time, i.e. terrestrial time. Time can be manipulated by speed and energy. Our space-travelling grandchildren will break the time barriers.