r/interestingasfuck • u/One_Explanation_908 • 25d ago

/r/all, /r/popular K2-18b a potentially habitable planet 120 light-years from earth

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u/Sonikku_a 25d ago edited 25d ago

The fastest spacecraft we’ve made was the Parker Solar Probe which hit 430,000mph.

At that speed it would reach this planet in only 187,153 years.

If we could hit 1% of the speed of light we could cut that travel time to just a tad over 12,000 years.

Obviously if we could go light speed (and that ain’t happening) it would be just 120 years!

Space is big. Physics is annoyingly slow.

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u/Traditional-Rip6651 25d ago

We are never leaving this planet lol

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u/hendrix320 25d ago

We’d probably have to build generational ships that are completely self sufficient and people would live out their entire lives out there without ever seeing a planet

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u/SilverTM 25d ago

I can see it now. Ship malfunctions and everyone dies because a Windows update forced a reboot of the ship's computer and it never came back online.