Quote:
Originally Posted by cmac2012
Don't hold your breath. It would take us more than a thousand years to get to the closest star that's not our sun with current tech. Maybe we'll get warp drive, huh?
|
I teach many lessons in the observatory to kids and I quite often bring up space travel. When I do the math myself, I come up with ~57,000 years to get to our closest star (Proxima Centauri) which is ~4.2 light years away.
I use 50,000 mph as the constant speed of travel which, I believe, is roughly the speed space probes travel. So if we could go 100,000mph then we would get there in half that amount of time and so on.
Here is how I did it-
4.2 ly x 6e12 miles in 1ly = 2.42e13 miles away
2.42e13 miles / 50,000mph = 5.04e8 hours of travel
5.04e8 hours / 24 hours in 1 day = 2.1e7 days of travel
2.1e7 days / ~365.242 days in a year =
57,496 years of travel
Quote:
Originally Posted by cmac2012
Or if too small our bods would get weak from too little gravity. Look at the huge differences between the planets in our solar system. And that's 8, 9 possibilities out of untold millions of permutations. I'm sure habitable planets are out there. Just too many stars and galaxies for there not to be. Finding it, now there's the rub.
|
Oh, I think we will find one not too far into the future. Like you said there are many out there. The real issue is getting humans there...
I think teleporting and wormhole type ideas are a better shot than WARP drives.
