Humanity’s current space technology is still at a crawl. Is there any hope of eventually getting out of the Milky Way?

This is a question that is often seen on the Internet. In fact, there is no answer to this question, and we can only make inferences out of thin air. Of course, these inferences can be based on the prospects of scientific development, or they can be groundless nonsense. Today, Spacetime Communication will talk about this issue with friends from the perspective of scientific development trends.

Scientific observations now suggest that the Milky Way is far more than the 100,000 light-years originally thought, but is instead a gigantic, flat spiral galaxy with a diameter of 200,000 light-years. Its disk looks like a windmill, or a typhoon vortex cloud pattern; its side looks like a discus on a track and field, thick in the middle and thin at the edges.

The thickness of the center of the Milky Way is about 12,000 light-years, the thickness of the edge is only a few hundred light-years, and the average thickness is about 1,000 light-years. This huge windmill has four arms, two long and two short. Our home solar system is located on one of the shorter Orion arms, about 26,000 light-years from the center of the Milky Way (the center of the Milky Way).

Okay, now that we roughly know the size of the Milky Way, we can see if we can fly out of the Milky Way, or how to fly out faster.

With the current space technology, humans cannot even fly out of the solar system, let alone the Milky Way. The farthest man-made probe from the Earth has flown for nearly 46 years and traveled 23.8 billion kilometers. It is currently flying out of the solar system at a speed of 17 kilometers per second. According to the gravitational radius of the sun, which is about 1 light year, it will take more than 17,000 years to fly out of the solar system.

The escape velocity of the Milky Way is about 120 kilometers per second, which means that it takes 120 kilometers per second to resist the gravity of the Milky Way core and fly out of the Milky Way. Therefore, a probe like Voyager 1 cannot fly out of the Milky Way, and even if it can fly out, it will take hundreds of millions of years.

The fastest human probe currently flying is the Parker Solar Probe launched by NASA in 2017. It has already accelerated to over 100 kilometers per second by using the gravity of planets and the sun, and is still accelerating. It is expected to enter the solar corona in December 2024, when it is only 6 million kilometers away from the solar surface, and its speed will reach 200 kilometers per second.

This speed is enough to fly out of the Milky Way. If humans take a spaceship at this speed to fly out of the Milky Way, how many years will it take? It depends on how you go and how you count as having left the Milky Way. If you count as having left the edge of the Milky Way, then there are several different directions and ways to fly.

If we fly along the plane of the disk, our coordinates are 26,000 light-years away from the center of the Milky Way, flying in the opposite direction of the Milky Way center. Based on the radius of the Milky Way of 100,000 light-years, we are still about 74,000 light-years away from the edge of the Milky Way. Flying at a speed of 200 kilometers per second, it will take more than 100 million years to fly out of this edge.

Of course, if we fly perpendicular to the disk, based on the thickness of 1,000 light years, if the solar system is in the middle of the disk, it would only be 500 light years above and below. It would only take 750,000 years to fly out. But this method of flying cannot be considered as flying out of the Milky Way in any way. The gravitational pull of the center of the Milky Way on that edge is still very strong, and the spacecraft still has to work hard to escape.

These speeds are only the speeds of unmanned probes. The speed record of manned spacecraft still remains at the level of the Apollo moon landing in the last century, that is, a maximum of about 10.5 kilometers per second. Moreover, due to the limitations of the life support system, manned spacecraft cannot sail in the space environment for a long time.

Currently, the speed of probes flying to Mars generally reaches the second cosmic speed, 11.2 kilometers per second. In fact, they can accelerate by using the slingshot effect of planetary gravity during flight, reaching more than 22 kilometers per second. However, it is still unclear how fast a manned spacecraft can fly. Iron Man Musk's Starship only said that it can reach 7.5 kilometers per second in low-Earth orbit, but did not say what speed it would reach when going to Mars.

However, it is said on the Internet that Musk has made another boast that he will jointly develop a light speed engine with NASA, and that the future spacecraft will reach the moon in 1.3 seconds and Mars in 13 minutes! However, there is no need to discuss this rumor that is still in the stage of bragging. We can only place good hopes on it, hoping that what this technology madman said can be realized like all the bragging he has done in the past.

What has attracted widespread attention is that NASA has officially announced the development of a "nuclear rocket", which is a rocket powered by nuclear power, which can not only save space costs, but also greatly shorten the time to Mars. It did not disclose how fast the nuclear rocket is, but only said that it would shorten the time to Mars to 45 days.

According to the old technology, it takes 500 days for astronauts to go to Mars and back. With the nuclear rocket technology, it only takes 90 days, which is 5.55 times shorter. If this is converted into speed, the average speed of spacecraft in the past can reach 22 kilometers per second, while nuclear-powered rockets can make this speed reach 122 kilometers, which has exceeded the escape velocity of the Milky Way.

If this spacecraft can carry enough life support and maintenance supplies to adapt to deep space voyages, it will take millions to hundreds of millions of years to fly horizontally and vertically out of the Milky Way. This method of flight is impossible, and no spacecraft can carry so many life support and maintenance supplies.

Therefore, judging from the current and foreseeable aerospace technology in the next few decades, not only is it impossible for humans to fly out of the Milky Way, but even flying out of the solar system is out of reach.

However, there is a project worth mentioning, which is the Centennial Starship Project that NASA is carrying out with the support of the US government. This project is to design and build a starship capable of interstellar voyage within 100 years. This starship weighs 50,000 tons, uses nuclear fusion as power, and can travel in space at a speed of 12% of the speed of light, so it flies at a speed of 36,000 per second.

If this plan can be realized, it is no problem to fly out of the solar system on this starship to take a look, but it is still unrealistic to fly out of the Milky Way and fly horizontally and vertically. Humans can only be prepared to travel on this starship without returning, and they must pass on their lineage and realize the recycling of life support systems and ecosystems.

So is humanity really hopeless? Will it ever be possible to fly out of the Milky Way?

No, according to Einstein's theory of relativity, there are two theories that can break the speed limit of light and achieve rapid space crossing. I call this crossing instead of sailing or flying because these two methods are really not gradual flights, but crossing the gap of time and space in a short time.

These two theories are called space-time folding and wormhole travel. The so-called space-time folding is to fold the space like origami, just like a folding fan, the huge space becomes a hurdle, and an ant only needs to climb over this hurdle to cross the huge space when the fan is opened; while wormhole travel is like a train passing through a mountain tunnel, which would have been a long way to go by making a bend, but can be reached quickly by making a hole in the mountainside.

Neither of these two methods really travel a long distance at a very fast speed, but rather they use "magic" to take shortcuts. Theoretically, these two methods can reach the destination many times faster than the speed of light, with no upper limit, compared to conventional speeds. That is, a distance of tens of thousands or even hundreds of millions of light years can be reached in a very short time.

The technology that achieves time-space folding and crossing is called a warp engine, also known as a jump engine or a superluminal engine. Driven by powerful energy or negative energy, it creates curved space-time and a "bubble" of normal space-time around the spacecraft, allowing the spacecraft to cross different time and space at speeds several orders of magnitude faster than the speed of light, while safely avoiding relativistic problems such as time dilation.

A wormhole is also called an Einstein-Rosen bridge or a space-time tunnel. This theory holds that under the influence of a huge gravitational field, such a space-time tunnel exists in the universe. In the future, it may be possible to artificially create such a space-time tunnel and maintain the stability of the openings at both ends of the wormhole, so that we can safely travel to another distant space-time.

Although these two technologies can reach the destination many times faster than the speed of light, they do not violate the speed of light limit theory. If these two technologies are realized, it will be easy for humans to travel across the Milky Way and even to other galaxies farther away for exploration.

However, these two theories or technologies are still in the stage of theoretical research and conjecture, or the science fiction stage. Although many scientists claim that they have entered the technical feasibility study and testing, there is still no prediction of when they will be successful.

So, can these technologies that are currently in the realm of science fiction really be realized?

I think it is possible. Because human cognition is still at a very low level, with the continuous deepening of scientific discovery and research, people's understanding of the universe and nature will definitely have new breakthroughs. At that time, human civilization will rise to a new level. At that time, not only will science and technology be able to create incredible machines, but human individuals themselves will also undergo subversive changes, such as no longer surviving in a fragile physical form and having a very long lifespan.

Therefore, I believe that as long as humans do not commit suicide, do not kill each other, but cooperate for mutual benefit, and coexist harmoniously with the environment, they will be able to continue for a long time and one day they will leave the Milky Way. This day may be hundreds or thousands of years later, or it may take ten thousand years. What do you think about this? Welcome to discuss.

This is an original article from Space-Time Communication. Please respect the author’s copyright. Thank you for your understanding and cooperation.