Will Humanity Ever Travel Beyond the Solar System?

 

from the beginning of time humanity has been on a mission to discover more and more about the dark mysterious expanse of space and we have come a long way from our understanding of the solar system and the worlds beyond with the help of technology telescopes and a number of successful missions and probes in more recent times voyager 1 became the first man-made object to successfully leave the solar system and some of us are sure to wonder at some point when will we ever leave the confines of our solar system welcome to Facnomenal and in today's article we will dive deeper into what it will take for humanity to travel beyond the solar system what some of the top experts have to say about it and when we could possibly expect to explore these mysterious worlds despite the advancements in technology and all the exciting new space discoveries humanity has yet to actually leave our solar system modern telescopes like the Hubble Space Telescope for example have given us the rare opportunity to take a peek into what lies beyond red giant stars cannibal galaxies terrifying black holes ice worlds and so much more but mankind hasn't quite made their presence known beyond the boundaries of our own galaxy in fact the title for the farthest distance traveled into space is still held by the all-american crew aboard the famous Apollo 13 shuttle back on April 14th 1970. they traveled a whopping distance of 248 655 miles away from earth and today we are yet to beat the record and venture further into space and if you want to get extremely technical about the human presence clyde william tombaugh the man who discovered Pluto had his ashes aboard the new horizons spacecraft and actually went to Pluto but besides these two spectacular moments in history we haven't voyaged further into the profound emptiness of space in theory it sounds fairly simple to

 take a trip to the nearest star or galaxy however our solar system is actually staggeringly larger than we think there is so much more to it than just our cosmic neighbors like Jupiter Saturn Venus Mercury or even poor little Pluto as you may very well know the objects in our universe are so far away that kilometers and miles are not enough to measure them so when we speak of distances in space we nearly always refer to light years of course the fastest moving thing in our universe is light which travels at a speed of 186 000 miles per second or 300 000 kilometers per second meaning a light year is about 5.88 trillion miles or 9.46 trillion kilometers the sun's starry neighbor proxima centauri is 4.26 light years away which doesn't sound too far off but when you consider just how far a single light year is it really puts things into perspective the nearest irregular galaxies from the milky way are the Large Magellanic cloud and Small Magellanic cloud sitting at a distance of 179,000 light years and 210,000 light years respectively even the andromeda galaxy whose edges seem to be bumping into our galaxy is a whopping 2.9 million light years away in short everything within our solar system is so ridiculously far away from each other that merely traveling between

 them can seem so out of reach

 that brings us to an important question if traveling to planets and celestial bodies within the solar system is already so difficult how long would it actually take to leave the solar system and how would we be able to do it to leave the galaxy one would have to travel a distance of 25,000 light years from the galactic center and would have to go through so much more to escape the halo of gas dust and clusters that encompasses the milky way is it possible it would be no easy feat to leave the milky way despite the success of the voyager probe that became the first man-made object to make it into interstellar space and leave the solar system but it would require a very advanced spacecraft to do so with humans aboard not only would the spacecraft have to be sturdy and strong enough to withstand the atmosphere of space but also able to sustain the humans on board not to mention it would have to be incredibly fast the Guinness Book of World Records states that Apollo 10 holds the record for

 the fastest a human has ever traveled

 the spacecraft traversed at speed of 24,855 miles per hour or 40 000 kilometers per hour though it may sound impressive at this speed it would take up to 114,000 years just to get to the closest star it would take beating the speed of light if we really want to travel beyond the solar system or even explore the mysterious oort cloud in the cold recesses of our solar system several attempts have been made over the years like Alcubierre's warp drive that could contract space in front of the spacecraft and expand the space behind it which unfortunately has only proven to be good in theory but let's not stop there some say the technology is just within reach so far it seems like space enthusiasts are rather optimistic about the probability of interstellar voyaging with some saying we could possibly be journeying to proxima centauri by 2100 spacex founder elon musk holds some very strong opinions when it comes to the matter he is highly optimistic about space travel being possible in the near future and his goal of one day establishing a human presence on mars seems more and more likely he even claims that he would be surprised if humans aren't on mars within the next couple of years the techno king stated in an interview with aeon magazine that though he is completely convinced that interstellar travel is completely doable there is still much work to be done like for starters devising ways in which we can slow down when reaching the Centauri system should be the focus he believes that anything other than that would be an impractical goal at the moment in his own words musk states if we are going to have a chance of sending stuff to other star systems we need to be laser focused on becoming a multi-planet civilization that's the next step but then again great ideas never come around without a fair share of criticism according to Marcus Young researcher at the u.s air force research lab doesn't seem to be as convinced at the joint propulsion conference he stated that his team had not found any viable options for interstellar travel despite many ideas they've only found to work in theory but after some research they quickly find that it won't work in real life or at least by current laws of physics unless we are able to master lightspeed travel it doesn't look like we will be saying hello to any other galaxies or stars anytime soon if we rely on current rocket propulsion technology for the time being faster than light travel is off the table until scientists and researchers are able to build a machine strong enough to bend space and time in order to ferry humans beyond the world we know the breakthrough starshot mission for example aims to demonstrate proof of concept for ultra fast light driven nanocrafts and will lay the foundation for a first launch to Alpha Centauri though it is still going to be an unmanned mission it looks extremely promising and a definite step in the right direction but until then it looks like we might have to simply feast our eyes on the stunning images of galaxies and heavenly bodies from the newly launched James Webb telescope and wait patiently till we can have a look at them ourselves so what do you think when will humanity voyage beyond our solar system let us know in the comments don't forget to smash that like button and subscribe to the channel so you don't miss a thing thanks for reading we'll see you next time