If you could travel at the speed of light how long would it take to travel form our solar system to the nearest star?

Answer 1

The nearest star (besides our sun) is 4.24 light-years from earth. This means that light emitted for this star takes 4.24 years to reach earth. Some stars are over millions of light-years away. The closest star is the sun. Beyond that is Proxima Centauri, at 4.24 light-years away. Alpha Centauri is at 4.37 light-years, and beyond that is Barnard's star at 5.97 light-years away.

4.24 light-years = roughly 24,925,000,000,000 miles (rounded to the nearest billion miles) lol

Answer 2

Aside from the Magellanic Clouds (small sibling galaxies to the Milky Way visible from the Southern Hemisphere) the closest galaxy to our own (the position of the Earth in the Milky was becomes irrelevant at these scales) is the Andromeda galaxy about two million (2 000 000) light-years away. So it would take about two million years to reach it. You can see the Andromeda galaxy with the unaided eye, it is the oldest thing you can see in the sky without a telescope. It looks like a soft faint blur.

Answer 3

It would depend on the speed of your spacecraft. A current generation spacecraft would take about 100,000 years to make it to the nearest star, Proxima Centauri.

But we know HOW to make faster spacecraft, and the design and engineering of a starship is well within our reach. Such a ship, powered by an Orion Nuclear Pulse Engine, could make it to the nearer stars in perhaps 100 years. it would carry a crew of perhaps 200, with their children and grandchildren completing the voyage. If we started now, the first such starship might be launched in 20 years.

At least in theory, we can begin the design of even faster craft, but the construction of such spacecraft would be dependent on many fundamental discoveries which are unpredictable. One concept would be a "ramscoop" designed to gather interstellar hydrogen for fuel. Physicist Robert Bussard outlined the basic principles; the remainder is probably more engineering than pure phsyics.

Answer 4

Proxima Centauri is the nearest star and it's about 4.22 light years away. So it would take about 4.22 Earth years to get there at the speed of light, if that were possible.

According to the Theory of Relativity we could never actually reach the speed of light. But, if we travelled anywhere near that speed there would be time "time dilation" effects. That means the time measured to reach the star would not be 4.22 years for a person actually on the space craft.

Answer 5

That would depend on the speed. At the speed of light:

To reach the Sun, it would take 8 minutes and 20 seconds.

To reach Proxima Centauri - the next star after our Sun - it would take about 4.2 years.

However, there are relatavistic consequences of travelling at the speed of light. The times noted above would apply to an observer outside the space ship. The occupant of the space ship would experience time dilation, and mass/length expansion, and would think that the trip took zero time.

Answer 6

The nearest start beyond the sun is Proxima Centauri which is approximately 4.2 light years (about 24,689,699,202,000 miles) away away from Earth.

Proxima Centauri is one of three stars in the Alpha Centauri system.

Answer 7

A long time!

Light travels at 186,000 miles per second. At 186,000 miles per second that is about 6,000,000,000,000 miles per year. The nearest star (Alpha Centauri) is 8 light years away, or 48,000,000,000,000 miles away, so it would take 8 years if you could travel at the speed of light. Current spacecraft speeds after leaving earth and boosted by other planets are at a maximum of 100,000 miles per hour. So with current technology it would take 48,000,000,000,000 miles divided by 100,000 miles per hour, or 480,000,000 hours or 20,000,000 days or about 55,000 years.

Pioneer 10 left earth 38 years ago and is headed to the star Aldebaran about 65 light years away. It is traveling at 25,000 miles per hour, so should get there in 2,000,000 years or so!

Answer 8

If you were traveling at very nearly the speed of light, the light of the Sun would be red-shifted to invisibility, and you would not see the Sun at all. In effect, the Sun's light would not be able to catch up to you.

Of course, if you were traveling that fast, time itself would seem to slow down, and if you were able to attain light speed itself, time would stop completely. So you would see nothing at all.

Answer 9

There is a binary pair of stars called Alpha Centauri A and Alpha Centauri B. The third star, called Proxima Centauri, which may or may not be part of this star system, is about 4.22 light-years from Earth. Proxima Centauri is the closest star to earth after the sun.

Answer 10

As is usual with this type of questions, that will depend on the speed. The nearest star system outside our Solar System is the Alpha Centauri system, at a distance of about 4.3 light-years; that means it will take light 4.3 years to get there. Currently, humans don't have the technology to get there even in a century or in a millennium.