• Question: Will we ever be able to travel to other galaxies within our lifetime?

    Asked by ross alam on 18 Jan 2021.
    • Photo: Will Ingram

      Will Ingram answered on 18 Jan 2021:

      Scientists are still working on space travel… so many inventions we use in our everyday lives have come from NASA or space tech in general:

      One recent exciting bit of fuel cell news relating to living on mars: https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-020-03430-x

      Also… check this out: https://www.toyota-europe.com/world-of-toyota/articles-news-events/2019/toyota-jaxa

    • Photo: Polly Osborne

      Polly Osborne answered on 18 Jan 2021: last edited 19 Jan 2021 2:56 pm

      The nearest large galaxy, Andromeda, is 2,480,000 light years away. That means it would take light 2,480,000 years to travel from Earth to Andromeda. We can’t travel anywhere near as fast as light, so with current technology it looks unlikely that we’ll be able to travel to other galaxies (but who knows what technology may be invented in the future!)

    • Photo: Manuel Kober-Czerny

      Manuel Kober-Czerny answered on 18 Jan 2021:

      That is a tricky question. @Will is correct that a lot of people are working on space travel and this will include other planets and at some point hopefully other solar systems. But with galaxies there is an extra challenge: As the whole universe gets larger and larger galaxies also drift more and more apart at super high speeds. And we may never be able to catch up to another galaxy, but I am also not an expert on this. I found this cute video on this question, maybe you like it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZL4yYHdDSWs

    • Photo: Graham Shields

      Graham Shields answered on 18 Jan 2021:

      No, I can’t imagine that being possible. Humans have so far only visited the Moon. It takes a bit more than one second for light to reach us from the Moon but tens of thousands of years for light to reach us from the nearest galaxy.

    • Photo: Michael Nolan

      Michael Nolan answered on 18 Jan 2021:

      Hi Ross.
      Great question and one that always gets us thinking! Unfortunately this will not happen in our lifetime and most likely not ever.
      You have to think about some properties of the Universe
      – speed of light has a maximum value which means you cannot travel or send information faster than that so the further away something is the longer it takes for information to get to us
      – For perspective, the distance to Pluto is so long that for a message to get there and back is about 9 hours (at the speed of light)
      – WE cannot build rockets to travel at that speed and even if we get to the speed of light, then relativity comes into play and our mass grows until it’s basically infinite!
      – Finally, the nearest neighbour galaxy, Andromeda is 2.5 million light years away. This means light needs 5 million years to get there and then return to us. About 5 million years ago, apelike creatures on earth started walking on two legs…

      So, unfortunately, its probably never going to happen (outside of SciFi)

Comments