You may have heard that NASA announced the discovery of no less than seven (7!) Earth-like planets some 40 light years away.
While this is exciting in itself, my first instinct, probably like yours, was… Okay, so how do we get there?
Well, the short of it is… we can look, but we can’t touch. At least not yet.
To actually travel there would take a space shuttle around 1.5 million years, which is a bit longer than most of us have. Even at light speed, it would take 40 years. But with upcoming telescopic technology, we should be able to at least observe these worlds and learn more.
Will we ever achieve FLS (Faster than Light) travel, even for robots? According to Einstein, nothing with mass can travel faster than the speed of light. But of course, there are some quantum mechanics exceptions, and a few theoretical ones. For instance, what if we found a real live wormhole?
Or what if we found a way to exploit quantum entanglement, a very real scientific phenomenon whereby two linked particles could be light years apart yet communicate instantaneously (something Einstein referred to as “spooky action at a distance”)?
My money is on entanglement leading to some eventual breakthroughs. Who knows, maybe we’ll send holographic Avatars to “go where no man has gone before.” For now, here’s an interesting article on 4 Ways to Travel Faster Than the Speed of Light. Just don’t plan on using any of them tomorrow.
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