• Question: DO U THINK HUMANS WILL BE ABLE TO REACH ANOTHER SOLAR SYSTEM?

    Asked by emeisterdubz to Louise, Michaela, Sian, Steve, Yvette on 16 Jun 2010 in Categories: .
    • Photo: Michaela Livingstone

      Michaela Livingstone answered on 16 Jun 2010:

      The closest planet to our solar system is believed to be 10.5 light years away, that means it’d take light 10.5 years to get there, and light travels super super fast, 299792.458 kilometers in a second… we can’t travel that fast, so it’d take way way more than 10.5 years. The chances of us being able to get there is low for a start, and that planet might not be suitable for us to live on anyway… If there was a planet closer than it would have been easier to spot, so I’m going to say I don’t think so. But never say never 🙂 We might develop super-fast engines or send out a ship that generations of people will leave on.

    • Photo: Yvette Wilson

      Yvette Wilson answered on 16 Jun 2010:

      maybe if we invent time travel! that would be cool! wonder if there would be life there already

    • Photo: Louise Johnson

      Louise Johnson answered on 16 Jun 2010:

      I don’t think so because they’re SO far away – the nearest known planet is over 10 light years off, so it would take generations to get there and we wouldn’t know how to keep anyone alive when they got there. But I would love to be wrong!

    • Photo: Steven Kiddle

      Steven Kiddle answered on 16 Jun 2010:

      I sincerely hope so. There are many problems to be resolved first. These include:

      – Bombardment from cosmic rays could kill us, give us cancer or make us infertile
      – Longterm weightlessness would waste away our muscles.
      – There is a limit to how fast we can go, which would mean many many generations would pass in between the start and the end of the journey. The nearest solar system is over 4 light years away, which is 39,700,000,000,000 km away (according to wikipedia). But yet even this probably doesnt have any planets.
      – Resources such as oxygen, fuel and food would be really hard to deal with, you couldn’t bring enough of it to last the whole way and it would be really hard to make it all on the way

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