My wife raised an interesting point about space travel.

Relativity shows that we probably cannot travel the speed of light. The closest planet with life (if any) is probably many light years away. She believes that there must be some other reason why we will never come in physical contact with life outside our solar system. In other words it was never meant to be and will never happen for an unknown reason. Any thoughts on this.
By the way, she thinks it is because we could not tolerate each others alien bacteria, diseases etc and the entire universe life could be wiped out!!!
PS- I don't agree with her. As usual.

Well, we will never know....

just like we were never meant to fly, or talk to someone half way around the world like they were right next to us

ur right. it wasnt ment to be and it never will be. At the rate out space ships go we will never find life on another planet on a manned space flight.

space travel to other planets will not happen in this century, or millienium

Maybe in the next 100,000 years, probably closer to million

we will never reach light speed, so yes, it will take a very long time, but it is possible provide we can get past the oort cloud

great colonies of hundreds of families will have to travel, and it will not be the generation that leaves that meets the aliens it will be the generation X number of millions of years down the road.

if we dont destroy ourselves by then

but hey, maybe when we make it to mars a super superior race will see we are space worthy and assist us, or maybe we will find a ring of near instant travel to other planets buried in egypt.. who knows

Sounds to me like a clash between science and personal beliefs. I guess we'll just have to hope for faster than light travel in the future. Which according to some experiments isn't as far fetched as it may seem.

If science shows us anything, it's that 'probably can't' only lasts so long.
At one point, we probably couldn't escape Earth's gravity. Not to mention that even IF travel at the speed of light can't be obtained, something could probably be figured out with cryogenics, or similar methods of manned flights.

"It wasn't meant to be" isn't exactly a scientific reason, nor is it a starting point for any sort of scientific debate. Our ignorance is our only restraint.

Don't you have other topics to discuss with your wife?

Instead of traveling at the speed of light, we can distort gravity so you can make point A to point B a lot closer than they normally are.

I guess I have to agree with Mintman's response. There are a lot of things that humans weren't intended to do, but that we have done anyway.

We used to think the world was flat, and that you'd fall off the edge if you went too far. It was only because someone decided to look for the edge that we discovered the world was round.

Back then, the world being flat was accepted as truth. Currently, relativity is accepted as truth. Things change!

We may discover some day that our understanding of physics is fundamentally flawed. We may figure out how us to use wormholes, or stumble upon 'transporter' technology, and won't have to travel the speed of light. I guess my point is that we don't really know what the future holds, and it is absolutely worth continuing to explore our world.

It's possible that it was never meant to be. It's also possible that this was God's ultimate challenge, to have his creations find each other!