I had a very polite comment submitted by an anonymous reader (yes I have one), rebuking me on some facts that I stated in my post : The Things Some People Believe
I had stated that : The physics of travelling the million of light years across space make it almost impossible to conceive of such a feat.
This was in reference to the unlikelihood of Interplanetary Travel. The Comment was:
Extraterrestrials don't need to be from "millions of light years" away. The next star is only 4 light years away (Proxima Centauri), and there are quite a few more with the 10 ly range.
I investigated and yes the commentator is right, I did exaggerate the distances.
So let me re-think this. Let's see, 1 light year = 6 TRILLION MILES. So 4.3 light years (the distance to Alpha Centauri) is 25,800,000,000,000 miles away. That's 25.8 TRILLION MILES AWAY!
The commentator goes on to say: "A few years of travel are easily conceivable - humankind did it on this planet just a few hundred years ago.
Um, I am thinking travelling 25 Trillion Miles is going to take more than a few years. I don't know of any space ship that travels at the speed of light.
Currently technology enables interplanetary craft to travel between 25,000 and 50,000 miles per hour in space.
At 50,000 mph it would take 500,000,000 years to reach that star. Even if the lifeforms on planets surrounding Alpha Centauri had a significant technological head start on us I very much doubt if they could overcome this travel distance/time problem.
Anyway, Anonymous, thanks for the comment!
