How can we possibly inhabit another planet, when the nearest star is so far away from earth?

Answer 1

One way is to invent something like a warp drive or travel through a worm hole. Or, put together a huge ship with many volunteers so that we have a living colony abroad the ship. Over many generations, the ship will eventually reach the distant solar system.

Another idea closer to home is terraformming. The idea is to basically transform the atmosphere of planets around us into one that's similar to Earth's. For example, terraformming Mars would mean pumping oxygen or sending oxygen generating organisms(some types of algae are being studied for this purpose). Scientists estimate that this can be done over a few centuries.

Answer 2

Sciene Fiction has been working on this for a long time. Remember, it was a science fiction author that first thought of using sattelites for communication.

Unless we find some way of traveling faster than light (currently thought to be impossable, inspite of Star Trek) we'll need to use a method that has the ship traveling there physically. At current technology levels, this means a "generation ship". The people who launch will never see their destination. Instead, there's enough people on the ship to allow for genetic diversity, and it's the children (or great great great......great grandchildren) of the progenetors who will eventually land and start building.

The other projected method is some form of hybernation. Currently, we don't have anything that can achieve this, althogh we haven't come across anything to tell us that it's impossable yet.

Answer 3

The nearest star is immaterial to inhabiting a planet in our solar system -- under the light of our sun.

Answer 4

A star is a sun. Hardly something you would want to inhabit.

You forget the planets in our own system with Mars the favourite to become the first planet after Earth for man to stand on.

Answer 5

We better fix this space ship!