So really it would take like a couple hundred thousand years to get to the closest galaxy?
123758
I'm sure you are spekaing strictly hypothetically, but don't forget the closer you get to the speed of light (c), the slower time moves around you.  So if you were to go like 90% of c for 1 year, more than 1 year would pass for everyone else.
244819
All stars except the Sun appear to the human eye as shining points in the night sky that twinkle because of the effect of the Earth's atmosphere. Interferometer telescopes are required in order to produce images of these objects. The Sun is also a star, but it is close enough to Earth to appear as a disk instead, and to provide daylight.\n\nStars are not spread uniformly across the universe, but are typically grouped into galaxies. A typical galaxy contains hundreds of billions of stars. The majority of stars are gravitationally bound to other stars, forming binary stars. Larger groups called star clusters also exist.\n\nAstronomers estimate that there are at least 70 sextillion (7×1022) stars in the known universe [1]. That is 70 000 000 000 000 000 000 000, or 230 billion times as many as the 300 billion in our own Milky Way.\n\nThe nearest star to the Earth, apart from the Sun, is Proxima Centauri, which is 39.9 trillion kilometers, or 4.2 light years away (light from Proxima Centauri takes 4.2 years to reach Earth). Travelling at the orbit speed of the Space Shuttle (5 miles per second -- almost 30,000 kilometers per hour), it would take about 150,000 years to get there. Distances like this are typical inside galactic discs, where the Sun and Earth are located. Stars can be much closer to each other in the centres of galaxies and globular clusters, or much further apart in galactic halos.\n\nCheck the wikipedia link below.
299050
Yes (personal judgment)\n\nwith the size of the universe as it is, it would be ignorant and elf-centered to say no. Especially since the sun is a mediocre star and the earth is a mediocre planet even in our system... Now, practically...\n\n-- Astronomers found planets by other stars, but not the size of Earth (too small for what we can detect now)\n-- the next star over is about 5 light years away? (not sure) so even if we travel at 99.999...% of light speed (as we are not massless) it would take ten years and trillions of trillions of dollars/Euro/tugrics, whatever you like. That is even if that star can support life.\n-- no reason to assume that there is multicellular life anywhere close, and if there is no reason to assume they are more advanced.\n-- Popular Science actually had an article last month on a non-DNA based "unicellular" primitive life that could have entered Earth on a small meteor. This is an idea scientists have been toying around with for a while. From my highchair it is possible, but I really don't know enough to say how probabble, afterall the space is mighty cold and the entery of our atmosphere mighty hot. Some say new viruses (which are not alive as virus is not a living entety) enter Earth in that way... that is doubtful since the DNA can't stand more than 50 degrees and the virus shell denatures at 42 (all in Celsius)\n\nI think there is life elsewhere but we will never see it... \n\nIf you have any more info or comments or just want to chat on this subject email me, I like interesting conversations.
102345
Of course the size of this galaxy and universe are beyond human undestanding, I know this scientist did a math formula where he put the very least possiblities of life and the number was still huge.\nEx, he did like in one galaxy there is only X planet where there is water and only X springs life and only X becomes civilized, and in the end he figurd there tons of life out there!
385055
744 million miles at the closest point
64494
The light had to travel 14 billion years.  Earth travels much slowly.
388788
There have been a lot of questions about this recently, and as you stated, there are billions of galaxies out there.\nHow many we don't know.  But certainly enough that it isn't out of the question that a lifeform could evolve out there.  Not necessarily humanoid but a lifeform.  They may not look anything like humans or for that matter anything we got on earth.\nThe fact is, everything we know about living things is based on what we have available here on earth.\nThere is the possibility of a lifeform that doesn't require an oxygen based atmosphere.  \nWe are still in the infancy stage of development in space.  If the beings out there are advanced by say 10000 years and have the technology, they could already have been here and are monitoring us as we plod along.  Nobody knows for sure.\nAll we have are guesses and speculation.  No hard facts are available.
204783
Check this out:\n\n"NASA's Hubble Space Telescope precisely measured the mass of the oldest known planet in our Milky Way galaxy. At an estimated age of 13 billion years, the planet is more than twice as old as Earth’s 4.5 billion years. It’s about as old as a planet can be. It formed around a young, sun-like star barely 1 billion years after our universe’s birth in the Big Bang. The ancient planet has had a remarkable history because it resides in an unlikely, rough neighborhood. It orbits a peculiar pair of burned-out stars in the crowded core of a cluster of more than 100,000 stars. The new Hubble findings close a decade of speculation and debate about the identity of this ancient world. Until Hubble’s measurement, astronomers had debated the identity of this object. Was it a planet or a brown dwarf? Hubble’s analysis shows that the object is 2.5 times the mass of Jupiter, confirming that it is a planet. Its very existence provides tantalizing evidence that the first planets formed rapidly, within a billion years of the Big Bang, leading astronomers to conclude that planets may be very abundant in our galaxy."
504984
Yes, you are completely right.  This is why astronomy is so important.  By looking at galaxies that are a billion light years away, we are seeing what those galaxies looked like a billion years ago.  Since we can see objects up to 13.7 billion light years away (corresponding to the age of the universe), we can see objects like galaxies as they appeared at a range of times, letting us develop more thorough hypotheses about how the universe itself has evolved, and what might lie in our galaxy's future.
497891
If the Andromeda Galaxy is 2.5 million light years away and it's the only galaxy on Earth to be seen by the naked eye, it leaves us to wonder how far it really is.\n\nPersonally, I googled it. I couldn't find a thing relating to the blank nothingness further than the universe.\nI only looked a little bit, but there are very few educational guesses on the Internet.\n\nMaybe you should try. Googling that is. Maybe it's you who'll find the right words to search it in.  \nThe words stumped me so the was probably my problem.\n\nGood luck on finding the answer!\n-Marissa
614337
You watched Event Horizon huh? \n\nto travel great distances, in faster than speed of light speeds.. the idea is to warp the space time dimension and create a wormhole that would move you from one side to the other.. things we need to work on.. \n\nTo do list;\n\n- how to create a worm hole?\n- how to bend space-time\n- how to know the point you are going to end up\n\nmy guess.. wont be done in 100 years
347471
My gut agrees with you, but I wouldn't jump to any conclusions. A sobering (and excellent) read is Rare Earth by Ward and Brownlee. One is an astronomer, the other a geologist. They make a convincing case that sentient life elsewhere in the universe is probably quite rare. At a minimum, they make minced meat out of the Drake Equation. Still, with so many possibilities ...\n\nThe other thing to remember is that first and possibly second generation of post-Big Bang stars could never have supported planets with life of any kind. It took billions of years before stars produced sufficient quantities of heavy elements that are essential for life.\n\nand, all those stars and all those galaxies don't exist simultaneously. As we look farther out into space, we are more and more likely looking at objects that no longer exist.\n\nso, having said all that, we must consider this. a) sentient beings are probably quite rare - whether you accept Ward and Brownlee's extreme argument or not. b) that life could only have existed for, say, the last 8 or 9 billion years of the universe's existence. c) the distances to other stars in our galaxy are vast, but the distances *between* the galaxies are mind boggling vast (there's a reason that even in Star Trek, with it's fantasy warp drive, the story lines are all confined to our own galaxy).\n\nJust food for thought.
654077
do you really think they dont have telescopes? if they have the tech to transverse solar systems then dont you think they can devise a device to look at us from afar? after seeing what a warring species we are it seems theyd rather study us from afar. we're dangerous.
586408
The galaxy Abell 1835 IR1916 is reported to be 13,230 million light-years from us.\n\nRed shift is the main method of estimating distance from us. We can also measure distance by the apparent luminosity of certain objects, such as variable stars and supernovas.\n\nAs our telescopes look further and further away, we are also looking back in time. So what we see past the furthest galaxies would be gas, and beyond that is the cosmic background radiation from the time the universe cooled to the point where it ceased being a plasma.
462641
Must have been some terrific star ship if one ship could help earth people kill everything in the universe.\nSince we can see out 13.8 billion light years, that's a heck of a lot of space to rocket around in to find everything to kill.\nBut since there are still some earth people left, maybe we'll just repopulate the universe.
178662
We are developing technolgies at a rapid rate e.g. computational power increases by almost a factor of 1000 every 5 years. However, I dont think we can achieve faster than light speed travel in 50 years (partly because its not physically possible, according to Einstein) We would need a great deal of energy, as someone mentioned before, the power of a 100 suns. We are currently a Type 0 civilization, harnessing our energy requirements from fossil fuels. It would take a lot more than 50 years to achieve near to light speed travel.\n\nHowever, there are concepts which have been put forward that are a step ahead in space travel, like the Hydrogen Ramjet. This vehicle can possibly travel at 30% of the speed of light although it requires a miracle in terms of engineering
615540
This question  has been asked before, hasnt it? Sounds familiar.\n\nSpace is never ending, you can leave the Milky Way and you will enter another galaxy, depending on where ure exit point is.