Traveling through space is something humans haven’t done yet. The closest we’ve come was when Neil Armstrong stepped foot onto the moon back in 1969. If you want to visit other planets, however, you’ll need to get much closer. How far away from Earth would you have to go before you’d reach another planet?
There are two ways to travel to another star system. One is using rockets powered by chemical fuels or nuclear power. This method has already been proven to work, but it requires massive amounts of energy, and it takes years to complete. Another way is to travel at very high speeds, where gravity becomes insignificant. The problem is that traveling faster than light speed means that time passes slower for you, and you never arrive anywhere.
How long does it take to get to space?
The answer depends on how fast you want to travel. To find out what’s possible, let’s start with a simple question: What is the fastest thing we can do right now?
The fastest human-made object currently travels about 10% of the speed of light (that’s 70 million miles per hour). But this object only lasts a few minutes. It won’t last long enough to make any trips to distant stars.
Even if we could build an engine powerful enough to propel us to 100 times the speed of light, it still wouldn’t be fast enough to escape our galaxy. We’d have to move even faster—but not so fast that we’d enter a black hole. So the fastest trip we could ever make is limited by the laws of physics.
But what if there were some kind of super-highway between galaxies? Could we use this new highway to make interstellar trips?
Theoretically, yes! In fact, scientists believe they know how to build such a highway. They call it a wormhole. Wormholes aren’t real; they’re just mathematical models used to describe certain kinds of spacetime. Instead of moving through normal space, astronauts inside a spaceship could pass through a wormhole.
Wormholes don’t actually exist in nature, but physicists think they may one day be able to create them using particle accelerators. Wormholes could also help solve the Fermi Paradox, which asks why aliens haven’t visited Earth yet. Scientists believe that wormholes might allow travelers to instantly zip across vast distances of empty space.
So what happens if someone goes through a wormhole? Would he or she appear somewhere else? Or would he or she disappear forever?
It turns out that no matter how fast you travel, you always end up in a different place. You can’t get to multiple places at once because time moves more slowly as you approach the speed of light. As soon as you leave your starting point, you’ll cross over into a new universe.
In theory, you could jump through a wormhole and end up on Earth five billion years in the future. However, according to Einstein’s Theory of Relativity, nothing can travel faster than light. That means that anything traveling close to the speed of light will eventually slow down until it reaches zero velocity. At that point, it stops completely.
This means that if you go really fast, you’ll stop before you reach your destination. You’ll never arrive at your destination.
If you want to make the trip from New York City to Paris, you need to spend less than three hours flying.
If you’re going at half the speed of light, you’ll have to wait around seven years.
If you want to travel to Alpha Centauri, the closest star to ours, you’ll need to pack your bags, because it will take more than four decades.
And if you want to visit other stars beyond our Milky Way Galaxy, you’ll probably need to pack your bags too, because the nearest galaxy to ours is 50 million light years away.
What does it feel like for the astronauts?
Astronauts who experience weightlessness while floating freely in space say it feels like being drunk: they float effortlessly without feeling any sense of motion. On Earth, gravity keeps us firmly planted to the ground. But when astronauts are launched into outer space, their bodies become weightless. This strange sensation has been compared to riding a roller coaster with your eyes open. Astronaut Michael Massimino said that he felt “like I was flying.”
But there’s another way to experience weightlessness. NASA engineers have developed a technique called parabolic flight where passengers ride in an airplane that circles the earth repeatedly. During each lap, the plane drops sharply, simulating the effects of gravity. It’s not quite the same as being in orbit, but it gives passengers a taste of what it’s like to fly in space.
What about time dilation?
When we talk about time, we usually mean the amount of time that passes between two events. For example, if you start at noon today and walk westward, you’ll pass by me tomorrow morning. We call this distance between events the time difference.
How far away is Mars?
Mars is so far away that it takes nearly 26 minutes for signals to travel from one planet to the next. In fact, it takes just under nine months for messages sent from Earth to reach Mars. Because of this delay, scientists use Martian days instead of Earth days. One Martian day lasts almost 24 hours.
So if you were watching TV on Earth right now, you’d see Martians celebrating Christmas Day on January 6th. And if you were listening to music on Earth right now, the Martians would be enjoying some Mozart or Bach during your lunch break.
The reason why it takes so long to get messages to Mars is because the signal travels through several layers of atmosphere before reaching its destination. The first layer is made of nitrogen molecules. Then comes oxygen molecules, which are heavier than nitrogen. Finally, Mars has a thin layer of carbon dioxide, which is even denser than oxygen.
Why do we care about how fast things move?
The faster something moves, the more energy it possesses. When something moves quickly, it can exert a lot of force. An object moving very fast could knock someone over. So physicists study how much energy objects possess and how fast they move to figure out how strong they are.
For example, the atomic nucleus contains protons and neutrons. Protons are positively charged particles, while neutrons are neutral. Neutrons are very heavy, so they don’t move very quickly. However, protons are lighter than neutrons, so they can zip around pretty fast. Scientists measure how fast protons move using a unit called meters per second squared (m/sec²). They found that a proton traveling at 99 percent the speed of light (c) has enough energy to rip atoms apart. That means that a particle moving at c would be strong enough to destroy a star.
If you want to know how fast a subatomic particle moves, you need to calculate its mass times its velocity. A proton weighs 1,836 times as much as an electron. So a proton moving at 99% the speed of light would weigh 18,360 times as much as an atom of matter. To put this number in perspective, a single proton weighs more than all the stars in our galaxy!
Staying in orbit
Earth orbits the sun once every 365 days. This is called an elliptical orbit. If we look down on Earth from above, we notice that the center of the planet always stays in the same spot relative to the sun. The sun appears to rise in the east and set in the west. The only place on Earth where this doesn’t happen is near the poles. There, the sun rises due north and sets due south.
This motion creates two different types of gravity: centripetal and centrifugal. Centripetal refers to the pull of gravity toward the center of the planet. Centrifugal refers to the outward push created by the rotation of Earth. These forces act on any body in orbit around Earth.
Centripetal acceleration is caused when a body is orbiting Earth. It pulls the body towards the middle of the planet, like a giant magnet pulling iron filings to the center of a bar magnet. As a result, any object in orbit will gradually spiral inward.
Centripetal acceleration is also responsible for making planets go round the Sun instead of flying off into space. You may have noticed that no rocket ship ever leaves the ground. In fact, most rockets never leave earth’s surface. Why not? Because if they did, they would fly away from the planet. But since they are already in orbit, the centripetal force keeps them there.
In reality, Earth isn’t perfectly circular. Instead, it bulges slightly at the equator. This causes the gravitational force to change direction at the equator. Gravity points downward at the equator and upward at the poles. This is why Earth rotates on its axis.
The moon goes around Earth because it is in orbit. Like the Earth, the moon is pulled by the centripetal acceleration. Unlike the Earth, however, the moon is not spinning. This makes the moon appear to stay still with respect to the sky.
The moon’s orbit is highly elliptical. At one point during each month, the moon passes closest to Earth. When this occurs, the moon is said to be “full.” During the next period, the distance between the moon and the Earth increases until the moon is full again.
As the moon travels further and further away from Earth, the centripetial force becomes weaker. Eventually, the moon gets so far away from Earth that it no longer feels the pull of the centripetal attraction. Then, the moon begins to fall back toward Earth.
When the moon returns to its original position, it falls faster and faster. By the time it reaches the Earth, the moon has slowed down enough to enter a stable orbit. In other words, the moon stops falling and starts moving in circles around Earth.
If you were standing on the Moon right now, you would feel weightless. That’s because the Moon is constantly going around Earth. Since there is no atmosphere to slow down objects in space, the Moon moves very quickly.
Will regular people get to go into space?
Yes! Space travel is possible today. We can even do it without leaving the comfort of our homes. All you need is a spaceship, which is just another word for spacecraft or spacecraft. A spacecraft is a vehicle designed to carry humans into space. Some spacecraft are reusable while others aren’t.
You might ask, what about all those astronauts who are currently living in space? Are they really in space or are they just floating around in their spacesuits? The answer is yes. They are definitely in space.
Astronauts live in space because gravity is extremely weak up there. If someone jumped out of an airplane right now, he or she would float straight up. However, in space, the same person would keep floating straight up forever.
This is because the only thing keeping us here on Earth is gravity. If we don’t have any gravity pulling down on us, then we won’t be able to stand on the ground. Astronauts are like that. They are kept inside a spaceship where gravity is strong.
What kinds of things will I see when I look up at night?
There are many different types of stars. There are red dwarfs, white dwarfs, blue giants, yellow giants, orange giants, brown dwarfs, black holes, neutron stars, and planets. Planets include Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune, Pluto, and hundreds more.
Why are some stars brighter than others? Even though stars are made mostly of the same stuff (hydrogen and helium), some stars shine much brighter than others. It turns out that these bright stars are bigger and hotter than the ones that are dimmer.
Why do some stars twinkle?
Twinkling happens when a star shines through thin clouds of gas or dust. As light bounces off the particles, the light waves move slightly forward and backward. This creates the illusion of a flickering star.
How many stars are there?
According to NASA, there are over 100 billion stars in the Milky Way Galaxy alone. That means that every single one of them could fit inside the Sun as many times as there are grains of sand on the beach.
How did scientists find out how many stars are in the universe?
Scientists use telescopes to study distant galaxies. These telescopes allow them to collect lots of information about the stars in these galaxies. Then, using this data, scientists calculate how many stars there should be in each galaxy based on the amount of energy being produced by the stars.
For example, if a star produces 10 million times more energy than the Sun, then the number of stars in that galaxy must be 10 million times greater than the number of stars in the Solar System.
Can I actually see a star explode?
No. Stars don’t explode. Instead, they burn themselves up by fusing hydrogen atoms together to make helium. When they run out of fuel, they die. Although stars die, they still exist.
If a star explodes, then it becomes a supernova. Supernovas produce huge amounts of radiation, including high-energy X-rays and gamma rays. Unfortunately, you can’t watch a star explode from our planet. But you can see the effects of a supernova thousands of years later.
If a star explodes, then most of its mass gets blown away into space. So, even though a star dies, it doesn’t disappear completely. A small part of the star remains behind. This leftover material forms new stars, planets, moons, comets, asteroids, and other objects.
How far away from the Earth is Alpha Centauri?
The closest star to us is Proxima Centauri. It takes 4.2 years for messages sent between Earth and Proxima Centauri to arrive. However, the next closest star is Alpha Centauri. It’s located just 20 trillion miles away from us.
Alpha Centauri has two suns. One is called Beta Centauri and the other is named Epsilon Centauri. They both have similar temperatures and radiate energy at the same wavelength.
What is the largest star system known?
In 1994, astronomers discovered a star system with eight stars. Each one is at least twice the size of our Sun.
Is there life on other planets?
Yes! We know that because we can detect radio waves coming from another star. Some people think that these radio signals come from intelligent aliens. Others think that they might come from natural sources like lightning storms on Jupiter. Either way, we know that there is definitely life somewhere else besides Earth.
What was the first exoplanet found?
In 1992, researchers used an infrared telescope to discover a strange object orbiting around a nearby star. Because this object had no visible light, scientists knew that it wasn’t a planet made of gas or rock. They also knew that it couldn’t be a brown dwarf (a failed star). So what could it possibly be?
In 1995, researchers announced that they had found a planet that orbits a normal star. This planet had an unusual property: it orbited very close to its parent star. Astronomers call this type of planet “hot Jupiters.” Hot Jupiters move so fast that their gravity pulls all the air surrounding them into a giant sphere. As a result, hot Jupiters receive almost as much sunlight as Jupiter itself.
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Michael has been a traveler and blogger since he was 17 years old. Now his passion is hiking, traveling, camping, and revealing his outdoor secrets. Stay connect with us for outdoor events and camping trips together.