Our nearest habitable planet is 4 light years away, so at 20% the speed of light it would only take 20 years.honorentheos wrote: ↑Fri Jun 05, 2020 4:59 amA probe traveling at 20% the speed of light would take about 200 years to arrive from our nearest likely known potentially habitable neighbor.
A long game for humans. On Earth some sharks can live up to 500 years. Advance extraterrestrials probably live for thousands of years, and for intelligent machines space travel isn't a problem at all.honorentheos wrote: ↑Fri Jun 05, 2020 4:59 amInterstellar travel and exploration is a long game. A very long game.
Intelligent aliens in the Milky Way already know planet Earth has life and they suspect it could have intelligent life. As I said interstellar aliens won't be afraid of our technology, we wouldn't be a match for a civilization millions of years more advance than us.honorentheos wrote: ↑Fri Jun 05, 2020 4:59 amvery fraught business where it's almost certain miscommunication will result in bad consequences no matter how well meaning both parties may be.
I agree, but there are ways around it.honorentheos wrote: ↑Fri Jun 05, 2020 4:59 am
Light speed travel is impossible by definition of that whole e=mc^2 thing. Physics demands whatever is traveling at light speed is no longer matter.
Davis, Eric. "Faster-than-light space warps, status and next steps." In 48th AIAA/ASME/SAE/ASEE Joint Propulsion Conference & Exhibit, p. 3860. 2013.
https://ui.adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2013J ... D/abstract