In the last century, it can be said that it was the golden age of human exploration of the universe, and with our continuous understanding of the universe, we found that human beings are so small in the universe that even the solar system in the Milky Way is only an insignificant planetary system!
The Milky Way is a large collection of stars, consisting of at least 200 billion stars, most of which are clustered in four cantilevers.
According to the latest data from astronomers, the diameter of the Milky Way is about 160,000 light-years, and our solar system is located in the Orion cantilever on the outskirts of the Milky Way, about 26,000 light-years away from the center of the Milky Way, at this moment the sun is leading all the celestial bodies in the solar system, rotating around the center of the Milky Way at a speed of 230 kilometers per second, it takes 220 million years to rotate, so the Milky Way is so large, can humans get out of the Milky Way?
We know that the farthest artificial vehicle for human beings to fly at present is the Voyager One launched by the United States in 1977, and since its launch, it has been traveling alone in dark space for nearly 40 years, and now it is only 22 billion kilometers away from Earth, equivalent to 20 light hours, which means that at its current speed, it will take 17,000 years to leave the solar system alone. The Milky Way, on the other hand, is 160,000 light-years long and has an average thickness of 3,000 light-years, and if Voyager One only flies vertically upwards, it will take 52.8 million years.
However, voyager one current speed is only 17 kilometers per second, can not leave the Milky Way, because the spacecraft wants to fly out of the Milky Way, the first speed must reach the fourth cosmic speed, the so-called fourth cosmic speed, that is, the minimum speed required to launch objects on Earth to get rid of the gravitational constraints of the Milky Way, according to the latest mass calculations of the Milky Way, the escape speed of the Milky Way is about 550 kilometers per second, that is to say, only to reach this speed can fly out of the Milky Way.
But even so, it would take millions of years at this rate, which is obviously meaningless to humans with only a few decades of lifespan.
Speaking of which, many people will think that as long as they reach the infinite speed of light, then they will not be able to leave the Milky Way?
Indeed, according to Einstein's time expansion effect, the faster the speed the time will be slower, once the infinite approach to the speed of light, the passage of time will be very slow, so in such an environment, it can cross the distance of light years, but in fact, it is not so, we know that the speed of an object increases at the same time, the mass will also increase, and it needs huge energy to support, the human body can not withstand such a speed.
So if you want to fly out of the Milky Way, the best way is to achieve through wormholes and warp speed, the so-called wormhole, that is, to fold two different space-time together, so as to achieve a distance span through this narrow tunnel, and warp speed is to compress and distort the front space-time, expand the rear space-time, to achieve faster-than-light flight
Unfortunately, so far scientists do not know anything about wormholes and warp velocity theory, and even some physicists believe that the energy required to maintain warp flight exceeds the total energy of the universe, so if you want to get out of the Milky Way, human beings do not know what year and month to wait!
This article is original by the Space Science Station, welcome to pay attention and take you along with long knowledge!