#light years

Forget noise cancelling headphones.

I am many, many light years away...

I’ve just calculated something out, and the result is, well – depressing, to say the very, least … Here is a photo of a portion of the Milky Way galaxy. Each dot in the photo is a star. Our galaxy contains about 300,000,000,000 stars. More than 60% of all stars have planetary systems, much like our Solar Planetary System. The nearest star to Earth, is Proxima Centauri, one, of three, in the Alpha Centauri system. Proxima is only 4.2 light-years away. Proxima also hosts at least one planet in its Habitable Zone! So far, this sounds like a great setup for some interplanetary–or, even, interstellar socializing; there’s bound to be someone else out there to talk to! Problem: There are 5.8 trillion miles in one light-year, or, 5.8 thousand billion, if you prefer, but terminology doesn’t make that number any smaller; it still looks like this:5,800,000,000,000. So, as close as 4.2 light-years sounds, Proxima Centauri, is about 25 trillion (25 thousand million) miles away. How awful!…But how come? OK, let’s say that we’ve decided to attempt to send an astronaut, round-trip, to Proxima Centauri–in the fastest rocket that has ever been built–the Saturn-V, three-stage, rocket-booster configuration used in the Apollo program. This configuration had a top speed of 26,000 mph. Now, 26,000 miles per hour, we’d all agree, is very fast–15 times as fast as an average bullet. But, it’s only 0.000037% of the speed of light, which travels at 186,282.3976 miles per second, in a vacuum. Yes–that’s all relatively fast, when compared to the speeds that we’re used to dealing with, and thinking about. But, a round-trip, to Proxima Centauri? It would take our astronaut—one-hundred-and-sixteen-thousand years—just to get there! He would be, long, mummified, by the time he arrived. Time dilation, in this case, is inconsequential; we don’t need to factor it in at such negligable velocities. The second, nearest, star to our solar system, with a known planetary system, is, Fomalhaut: about 15 light-years distant. Suppose we decided, that, instead of sending an astronaut, anywhere, we would send a message by radio, who’s waves, travel through space at light speed. The message would, chug along, at the speed of light—for 15 years—before anyone on a planet of the Fomalhaut system picks it up. If they do, and if they can decipher the message, and decide to reply to us, we would have to wait—another 15 years—to receive that reply. There IS NO WAY around this problem – not even theoretically. The speed of a moving photon (light) is a fixed, universal constant; nothing can go faster, than 186,282.3976 miles per second. NOTHING. No material object can even hope to attain that speed, or even close to that speed (see, and review, Special Theory of Relativity, by A. Einstein). Time=Space. If you could remove the space between points A and B, then you have also removed the time it would have taken to travel from point A to point B. Remove the time, then you have also removed the space separating them. But that isn’t the saddest part…  The distances, and times I have mentioned here, are prohibitive and are one of the reasons astronomers do not believe in UFO’s, or, that we’re being visited by extraterrestrials. Yes!–WE DO believe they exist– but, not that we’re being visited by them, daily, or on any regular basis. There are only two stars–with only one planet, each, within a 15 light-year (that’s 88,119,025,050,000 miles) of Earth. Being visited, by either of two potential populations of aliens, given those limitations and assuming they exist at all–and are capable of spaceflight–is grasping at straws, at best. Our chances of meeting up with anyone else out there, is about nil. We may be surrounded, perhaps, by countless populations of, ‘The Celestial Peoples of the Milky Way Galaxy’–and yet–still, be truly, and indefinitely, alone….

Behind The Shoot | Nas & DJ Premier - Light-Years