The technology required to travel between galaxies is far beyond humanity's present capabilities, and currently only the subject of speculation, hypothesis, and science fiction. However, theoretically speaking, there is nothing to conclusively indicate that intergalactic travel is impossible.
The closest galaxy is the recently discovered Canis Major dwarf galaxy, which is "only" 25,000 light-years away. So it would take 25,000 years to get there if you traveled at the speed of light. Actually, that's the amount of time it would take from the perspective of the outside world.
"It's very unlikely," Matteo Ceriotti, an aerospace engineer and space systems engineering lecturer at the University of Glasgow in the U.K., told Live Science in an email. However, as Ceriotti explained, "unlikely" does not mean it's "impossible," and suggested a way it could theoretically be done.
But one day, far in the future, Andromeda will be bright in our sky, growing larger and larger … as it gets closer and closer to us. And even though the two galaxies are still 2.5 million light-years apart, the eventual merger of our two galaxies has, in fact, already begun. View larger.
Based on calculations performed by Dr. Phil Lubin a few years ago, it's possible that speeds up to 20% the speed of light could be reached. While we don't yet have a plan for decelerating such a spacecraft, reaching the nearest star in a single human lifetime is within the realm of possibility.
The truth is that interstellar travel and exploration is technically possible. There's no law of physics that outright forbids it. But that doesn't necessarily make it easy, and it certainly doesn't mean we'll achieve it in our lifetimes, let alone this century. Interstellar space travel is a real pain in the neck.
Five robotic spacecraft have sufficient velocity to escape the bounds of our solar system and travel into interstellar space, but only one—NASA's Voyager 1—has crossed that boundary so far.
Voyager 1 will leave the solar system aiming toward the constellation Ophiuchus. In the year 40,272 AD (more than 38,200 years from now), Voyager 1 will come within 1.7 light years of an obscure star in the constellation Ursa Minor (the Little Bear or Little Dipper) called AC+79 3888.
Deep in the centre of the planet is the 'inner core', which we think is made of solid iron and nickel. This is surrounded by the 'outer core', which is also made of iron and nickel, but is molten. Convection currents in the outer core create Earth's magnetic field.
In short, being basically anywhere in space without a spacesuit would be catastrophic. (Heck, even being in space in a spacesuit will do you some harm.) There's nowhere besides Earth where you could survive any longer than two minutes.
Among the stunning variety of worlds in our solar system, only Earth is known to host life.
So, to leave our Galaxy, we would have to travel about 500 light-years vertically, or about 25,000 light-years away from the galactic centre. We'd need to go much further to escape the 'halo' of diffuse gas, old stars and globular clusters that surrounds the Milky Way's stellar disk.
So before even diving into the specifics of the system or its planets, no, humans can not yet go to Alpha Centauri and live there because, simply put, we wouldn't survive the trip. The Alpha Centauri system actually has three stars.
Even if we hopped aboard the space shuttle discovery, which can travel 5 miles a second, it would take us about 37,200 years to go one light-year.
Excluding planetary engineering, by the time the two galaxies collide, the surface of the Earth will have already become far too hot for liquid water to exist, ending all terrestrial life; that is currently estimated to occur in about 0.5 to 1.5 billion years due to gradually increasing luminosity of the Sun; by the ...
Four billion years from now, our galaxy, the Milky Way, will collide with our large spiraled neighbor, Andromeda. The galaxies as we know them will not survive.
There's a limit to how much of the universe we can see. The observable universe is finite in that it hasn't existed forever. It extends 46 billion light years in every direction from us. (While our universe is 13.8 billion years old, the observable universe reaches further since the universe is expanding).
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Four billion years from now, the increase in Earth's surface temperature will cause a runaway greenhouse effect, creating conditions more extreme than present-day Venus and heating Earth's surface enough to melt it. By that point, all life on Earth will be extinct.
At the current rate of solar brightening—just over 1% every 100 million years—Earth would suffer this "runaway greenhouse" in 600 million to 700 million years. Earth will suffer some preliminary effects leading up to that, too.
The spiral galaxy, NGC 4622 (also called Backward galaxy), lies approximately 111 million light years away from Earth in the constellation Centaurus. NGC 4622 is an example of a galaxy with leading spiral arms.
To escape the gravitational clutches of our galaxy, a spaceship would need to zoom out of our solar system and hit 537 kilometres per second. For context, a rocket needs to roar off at just 11.2 kilometres per second to escape Earth's gravity. Conventional rocket engines would never make it.
The light that travels the longest gets stretched by the greatest amount, and the object that emitted that light is now at a greater distance because the universe is expanding. We can see objects up to 46.1 billion light-years away precisely because of the expanding universe.
Over 80% of all matter in the universe is made up of material scientists have never seen. It's called dark matter and we only assume it exists because without it, the behaviour of stars, planets and galaxies simply wouldn't make sense.