fun fact: we could accelerate a huge spaceship to approximately 3% speed of light with technology that we have today.
nuclear fission + ion drive would do that.
at this speed, traversing the entire galaxy (Milky Way) once would only take about ~5 million years, or about 1/1000 of the time that life has existed on Earth.
For the pedants like me who remember the earth being under 5 billion years (4,54 billion) old, life is almost as old (3,5 billion), so the simile holds.
5 million years ago we had megasloths, sabre toothed tigers, and sharks — sharks are eternal.
fun fact: we could accelerate a huge spaceship to approximately 3% speed of light with technology that we have today.
nuclear fission + ion drive would do that.
at this speed, traversing the entire galaxy (Milky Way) once would only take about ~5 million years, or about 1/1000 of the time that life has existed on Earth.
For the pedants like me who remember the earth being under 5 billion years (4,54 billion) old, life is almost as old (3,5 billion), so the simile holds.
5 million years ago we had megasloths, sabre toothed tigers, and sharks — sharks are eternal.
The vastness of space is amazing. Even at light speed it would take about 2.5 million years from Earth to the edge of our closest neighbor Andromeda.
Guess at some point it’ll be less once the Milky Way collides with Andromeda.
Can’t wait
What if we pass within close range of habitable andromedan planets and make some new space friends in this lonely universe?
Think we’ll be enlightened/altruistic enough by then to do it without colonizing, exploiting, and oppressing its inhabitants?
Great, let’s send a probe to the Proxima system