• Question: Do you think that we will ever travel out of this galaxy and into another which might contain new life?

    Asked by Mollikate to Anna, Stefan, George, Jodi, Rob on 12 Nov 2014. This question was also asked by 653bdta49.
    • Photo: Stefan Lines

      Stefan Lines answered on 12 Nov 2014:

      In 1977, they launched a space probe called Voyager 1. It’s been travelling for 37 years, but it would take another 17,565 for it to travel a whole light year. The closest star to us is just over 4 light years away. The closest galaxy, Canis Major Dwarf, is 25,000 light years away. That means 400 million years travelling to the nearest galaxy.

      So my short answer would be, only if we can learn to travel MUCH faster. But also remember, even if we travelled at the speed of light, it would still take 25,000 years to get to the nearest galaxy :O

      Do you ever get the feeling we’re not meant to visit these places?

    • Photo: Anna Scaife

      Anna Scaife answered on 13 Nov 2014:

      Us personally? Probably not 🙂

      But humanity generally? One day, yes. Although it will take quite a while…

    • Photo: Rob Appleyard

      Rob Appleyard answered on 14 Nov 2014:

      Well, just travelling to another star is a very long trip. Even if we could go at an average 30,000,000 metres/second (10% of the speed of light), it would take us 120 years to cover the 12 light years to the nearest potentially habitable exoplanet candidate (there are two orbiting around the star Tau Ceti that are in the habitable zone).

      The nearest big galaxy is Andromeda. It is about 2,500,000 light years from us, so our 30,000,000 metres/second trip would take 25 million years. I don’t know about you, but I think I might get a bit bored on that trip.

    • Photo: Jodi Schneider

      Jodi Schneider answered on 17 Nov 2014:

      In a lot of science fiction, travel time is spent “asleep”. Fancy spending the long, long journey frozen/in chemical stasis?

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