There are currently an estimated 6,200 exoplanets have been found in more than 4,700 solar systems, though none are like Earth or our Solar System. It is likely that most stars could have at least one planet. There are more than 100 billion stars in our galaxy alone! The number of planets is therefore astronomical, and some may be habitable.
Now the problems, space is vast – beyond our imagination.Proxima Centauri, the nearest star to our Sun, is about 40 trillion kilometres away, 268,000 times farther than the Sun is from Earth. It would take about 6,650 years to reach Proxima Centauri, so interstellar travel within human lifespans would require much higher velocities.
Let’s assume we did have the means to travel close to the speed of light. Time is relative; This is called time dilation.Aliens would go home to a planet much older than the one they left – perhaps by a century or more. They would be time exiles.
Then there’s the unimaginably high energy requirement for interstellar travel.
The mass of the spaceship increases with velocity, so an increasing amount of energy is required to accelerate it. At the speed of light, the ship becomes infinitely massive, requiring an infinite amount of energy. This is clearly impossible.
Yet another issue is our biosphere,not toxic for us, but oxygen is reactive and could be highly corrosive for aliens. And while they could wear protective suits like humans do when going to inhospitable environments, reports of visiting aliens do not include any descriptions of spacesuits.
For those of us deficient in science facts, science fiction fills the void. The operant word is fiction.
Topic: Not going to happen (Read 5 times)
