To be clear, even if you’re moving at 1000x the speed of light, and have figured out a way around relativity so that you don’t have time dilation (and so you can, y’know, go faster than the speed of light), galactic distances are still so vast that interstellar traffic is largely not feasible. Our galaxy–one of billions, trillions, or more–is about 2M light years across. Going all the way across the galaxy at 1000x the speed of light would still take 2000 years.
Milky Way is much smaller than that. The Andromeda galaxy is 2.5M light years away. Maybe that’s where you got 2M from. The Milky Way is about 100,000 light year diameter.
If we somehow figured out how to travel at 1000x speed of light, I’m sure we’ll be able to increase that number to 1 million, 1 billion, and beyond. Until we just stopped using “speed of light” as a frame reference because it would be a completely different method of traveling (like instantaneous through a wormhole or something).
To be clear, even if you’re moving at 1000x the speed of light, and have figured out a way around relativity so that you don’t have time dilation (and so you can, y’know, go faster than the speed of light), galactic distances are still so vast that interstellar traffic is largely not feasible. Our galaxy–one of billions, trillions, or more–is about 2M light years across. Going all the way across the galaxy at 1000x the speed of light would still take 2000 years.
Our galaxy itself contains a hundred billion stars
It’s a hundred thousand light years side to side
It bulges in the middle, six thousand light years thick
But out by us, it’s just a thousand light years wide
We’re thirty thousand light years from galactic central point
We go 'round every two hundred million years
And our galaxy is only one of millions of billions
In this amazing and expanding universe
…And pray that there’s intelligent life somewhere out in space 'cause there’s bugger-all down here on earth.
But only EXTREMELY rarely is there life, otherwise it might be likely that the great filter is AHEAD of us
Can we have your liver then?
Yes, alright, you’ve talked me into it.
And despite all this, my consciousness is stuck with a shitty meat body and a credit score.
Milky Way is much smaller than that. The Andromeda galaxy is 2.5M light years away. Maybe that’s where you got 2M from. The Milky Way is about 100,000 light year diameter.
If we somehow figured out how to travel at 1000x speed of light, I’m sure we’ll be able to increase that number to 1 million, 1 billion, and beyond. Until we just stopped using “speed of light” as a frame reference because it would be a completely different method of traveling (like instantaneous through a wormhole or something).
Americans will come up with some ridiculous unit for it, like 3 1/16 * 10^24 inches per lunar cycle
Don’t be ridiculous. We all know it’s gonna be “Football field per Superbowl Season”.
Or, y’know, warp factors. XD
Isn’t warp just light speed? I was under the impression that warp 1 is the speed of light, and eg warp 7 being 7x the speed of light
Nope! Warp factors aren’t linear, they’re logarythmic until like warp 9.6 where they go exponentially towards infinity at warp 10.
https://www.startrek.nl/sites/default/files/sbs/images/database/misc/warp_chart.gif