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Old 04-25-2007, 01:10 PM   #10
Hack&Lube
Atomic Nerd
 
Join Date: Jul 2004
Location: Calgary
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Quote:
Originally Posted by worth View Post
Getting there is the problem though. Even though it's one of the closest 100 stars, 20.5 ly at our current rate of travel is way out of our reach. somebody figure out wormholes already!
20.5 lightyears is 1.93940832 × 10^14 kilometers. Our current rate of travel for deep space probes is at maximum, around 20 km/s (which is already generous, the rockets and probes sent from the 60s-current were all around 10-15 km/s in top speed only)...so basically it would take 9.69704162 × 10^12 seconds to get there or, if my calulations are right, 307,287.269 years!

Then again, I just read another article that said it would take roughly 5 billion years of travel so I don't know if I'm correct.
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