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If an advanced civilization were to build a spacecraft traveling at 10% of the speed of light, how long would it take to cross our Galaxy? How does that compare with the age of our galaxy?

2007-01-31 14:49:30 · 7 answers · asked by thickfaces 1 in Science & Mathematics Astronomy & Space

7 answers

670,616,629.384 MPH Speed of light

100,000 LY across the Milky Way

5,880,000,000,000 miles in a Light Year

67,061,662.94 MPH - 10% of Light Speed

8,768,049,795.31 Hrs to travel across the galaxy

365,335,408.14 - Days

1,000,918.93 - Years

100,091.89 - Decades

10,009.19 - Centuries

1,000.91 - Millennium

2007-01-31 15:04:59 · answer #1 · answered by mazaker2000 3 · 1 1

Our galaxy is about 100,000 light years across, so it would take about 1,000,000 years. However, this is how long it would appear to you, who are at a "rest frame," to witness the crossing. If that spacecraft were traveling, say, at 95% the speed of light, the aliens aboard the spacecraft may only see 50 years of time pass for them. By the same token, if we could build a spaceship that would travel at 99% the speed of light, it would only take 50 years for those on board the spacecraft to travel to the Andromeda Galaxy, which is 2.7 million light years away. Of course, on Earth, when the spaceship reaches the Andromeda Galaxy, it would be 2.7 million years later. Our galaxy is perhaps 12 billion years old, so 2.7 million years is but a tiny fraction of the age our our galaxy.

2007-01-31 15:20:05 · answer #2 · answered by Anonymous · 2 1

that's no longer obtainable with present day technologies. For a spacecraft to go swifter, it would desire to produce greater thrust, the two by using throwing off greater mass or throwing it off swifter. known rockets accomplish that by using the fast of develop of liquid gasoline in an explosive technique, however the ensuing gasoline jet is a lot slower than the value of sunshine. it must be obtainable to accomplish that style of severe speed using an ion rigidity, throwing off very small parts of rely at close to the value of sunshine. in spite of the undeniable fact that, the acceleration could be very sluggish. Graham H has his calculation backwards. If a spaceship travelled 10 easy years at ninety% of the value of sunshine, an exterior observer could see the experience as taking 11.a million years, however the group could only experience a 4.8 year holiday because of the fact of time dilation. that's the shifting clock which will run sluggish relative to a table certain clock. If the deliver then rotated and got here lower back (ignoring the time taken to advance up and decelerate) the group could only have elderly 9.6 years, together as their acquaintances in the international could have elderly 22.2 years.

2016-11-23 19:07:45 · answer #3 · answered by ? 4 · 0 0

See Wikipedia for info on the Milky Way Galaxy
100,000 light years across means that at 10% the speed of light it would take about a million years to cross. from one edge to the opposite edge. The oldest stars in the Milky Way galaxy are about 13 billion years old. that means that the galaxy is about 13,000 times that old.

2007-01-31 15:17:12 · answer #4 · answered by anonimous 6 · 0 0

The center of the Milky Way Galaxy is roughly 6.2 x 10 to the 15th power miles away from Earth.

Light travels at 186,000 Miles per second.

1/10 the speed of light would be 18,600 Miles per second
(which is a totally impossible speed to travel at).

So just to the center of the Milky Way,
Travel, one way ticket, would be:

6.2 x 10 ^ 15 / 1.86 x 10 ^ 4 = 3.3 x 10 ^ 11 seconds

And

There are roughly 3.15 x 10 ^ 7 seconds in an Earth year.

Which means that the elapsed time for this trip would be
somewhere close to 1 x 10 ^ 4 Years...10,000 years.

Now that is only from Earth to the center. You want to travel
all the way from one side to the other... I think that the correct
distance for that is on the order of 100,000 Light Years. Do
not plan on making this trip.

2007-01-31 16:31:17 · answer #5 · answered by zahbudar 6 · 0 2

Roughly a million years. But the galaxy is much older than that -- billions of years. It can be shown that even using a thermonuclear reactor (which we have no idea how to do), it is impossible to come to anywhere near the speed of light -- unless we can figure out a way to drive a spacecraft that does not rely on Newton's third law.

2007-01-31 15:07:01 · answer #6 · answered by Anonymous · 0 1

Simply, it doesn't work like that....light is slow in an atmosphereless environment. There are much faster things out there than light, trouble is, obviously, you can't see it.

2007-01-31 15:18:08 · answer #7 · answered by Anonymous · 1 2

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