Could Aliens Really Travel Here Across Light-Years?

Term: Light-year: the distance light travels in one year, about 5.88 trillion miles.

Term: Proxima Centauri: the nearest star to the Sun, about 4.2 light-years away.

Term: Speed of light: about 186,000 miles per second. No object with mass can reach it.

Could Aliens Really Travel Here Across Light-Years?

Not with any technology we know. The nearest star, Proxima Centauri, is about 4.2 light-years away, roughly 25 trillion miles. Light needs 4.2 years to cross that distance, and no object with mass can reach light speed. Our fastest spacecraft would need thousands of years. Supporters of the extraterrestrial view say a much older civilization may have physics we do not understand, and that is a possibility and not a demonstrated fact.

The distances

Proxima Centauri is the closest star to the Sun, at about 4.2 light-years, or roughly 25 trillion miles. Light travels at about 186,000 miles per second, and it still needs more than four years to make the trip. A round trip at light speed would take about 8.4 years. Most stars that scientists discuss as possible homes for life are much farther. The TRAPPIST-1 system is about 40 light-years away. The Milky Way is roughly 100,000 light-years across, and the Andromeda galaxy is about 2.5 million light-years away.

Why light speed is a limit

Einstein’s theory of relativity says that an object with mass needs more and more energy as it approaches the speed of light. At light speed it would need infinite energy. That is why physicists say no object with mass can reach it. Faster-than-light travel would require physics that goes beyond relativity as it stands.

What our fastest spacecraft can do

Voyager 1, launched in 1977, travels at about 38,000 miles per hour. At that speed it would need about 75,000 years to reach Proxima Centauri. The Parker Solar Probe reached about 430,000 miles per hour at its closest approach to the Sun in December 2024. It would still need about 6,600 years. Proposals such as Breakthrough Starshot aim for tiny probes that travel at 20 percent of light speed and arrive in about 20 years. That project is a concept, and no working system exists.

The case that it could be done

Supporters of the extraterrestrial view point out that a civilization millions of years older than ours might have energy sources and physics we cannot picture. They also suggest that very slow probes or ships that carry generations of travelers could cross the distances. Physicists have written equations for warp drives and wormholes, but those need forms of energy that have not been found. I cover that in my post on warp drives. None of these ideas has been demonstrated.

My view

I regard the speed of light as the strongest scientific argument against the extraterrestrial explanation. In my book I also offer a belief that goes beyond physics. I ask whether the Creator set this limit deliberately, so that corrupted beings could not spread from world to world across the stars. That is a matter of faith and not of science, and I present it as such.

What is solid and what is not

The distances and the speeds are measured and documented. That interstellar travel is beyond our technology is not in dispute. Whether some other civilization could do it is unknown. Disclosure is available on Amazon. You can find more of my work at ckqbooks.com.

Sources

NASA, Voyager mission facts. NASA, Parker Solar Probe perihelion record, December 2024. Breakthrough Initiatives, Breakthrough Starshot. C. K. Quarterman, Disclosure: They Are Not Extraterrestrials, chapter on the speed limit.