Is intragalactic travel possible or is it hopelessly unattainable?

Question

How about intergalactic travel?

Answer 1

Yes it is possible! But even at the speed of light it would take 100 thousand years to cross our galaxy and millions of years to reach even the nearest galaxy. Wormholes would make the journey a lot faster but we just can't make them with our current technology!

Answer 2

Technically it is possible but very very very very slow, If light can go the speed of light we can find a way to do it too eventually.

Answer 3

As we know things now, yes it is impossible.

The counter-argument, of course, is that we knew so little 100 years ago compared to now that 100 years from now, who's to say what's impossible then?

My counter-counter-argument is that what we have achieved in terms of progress and knowledge in the past 100 years has been supported by a vast increase in manpower (the earth's population is 4-5 times larger than 100 years ago), and a prodigious increase in energy use supporting modern industry and society.  We've seen the limitations on how much energy (especially fossil fuels) is available, and it's hard to imagine the earth could support 30 billion people 100 years from now, so I seriously doubt that we will be as far ahead of us 100 years from now as we are compared to 100 years ago.

Answer 4

Possible but extremely hard unless you can develop some sort of faster than light engine otherwise it would take about 2.5 million years to get to the closest galaxy going at the speed of light.

Answer 5

The only major limitation as I see it is: time, distance, and aging. If we should happen to master the aging process, time and distance become far less of a concern. Human cloning is likely our best hope for ultimately mastering our own biology and, that of the universe itself. If we could develop a strategy for cloning the human being and, if necessary, transferring consciousness, it would open the door to extended space travel.

I believe that it is possible and should be evaluated by scientific means. A human clone isn't just a delayed twin. The embryogenesis are significantly different.  Human twin studies and quantum mechanics suggest that as a true human clone matures, they and their genomic donor will become one and the same conscious person. Isn't that pretty much all that's required for extended space travel?

We have the technology right now to create cloned animal models in order to test this hypothesis.

See: Human Cloning Commentary

http://www.reproductivecloning.net/open/...

Biosystems as conscious holograms

http://www.emergentmind.org/PDF_files.ht...

O.A.K. Embryonic Holography

http://www.geocities.com/nwbotanicals1/o...

Quantum Consciousness

http://www.valdostamuseum.org/hamsmith/Q...

Quantum Mechanics and the Brain

http://suppes-corpus.stanford.edu/articl...

Answer 6

A.k.a. interstellar travel, yes, *intra*galactic travel is certainly possible. The two Voyager and two Pioneer probes to the outer planets are already bound for the stars, albeit on a "slow boat." Human travel is also possible, but the speed relative to the distance is the kicker. Not only can we not go faster than light speed, we can't really anticipate going more than a few percent of light speed, realistically. Even to accomplish that would require the perfection of a fusion reactor, a pretty tough nut to crack.

Time dilation would not be a factor because the speeds possible are just too low for relativistic effects to be dominant. So, we're looking at decades but more likely centuries to travel to any of the nearest stars. Two of the most realistic scenarios are (1) a generation starship, in which the people who leave Earth will die en route and their decedents will be the ones to see their destination, and (2) some form of suspension of life processes, like suspended animation - a kind of high-tech hibernation - or perhaps the germ cells of humans - eggs and sperm - or frozen embryos - will be incubated and hatched (pardon the terms) upon arrival.

I do think that we won't really be able to take that step to the stars until we have an advanced civilization throughout the solar system. Thinking of it now is perfectly alright, but it may be a little like primitive humans dreaming of flight - it will take a long time of intermediate technological advances to get there. But I'm optimistic that we will.  

Answer 7

technically possible.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intergalact...

http://search.yahoo.com/search?fr=ieas&p...

Answer 8

Technically, even terrestrial travel is "intragalactic". Anything that occurs on Earth occurs within the galaxy that contains Earth.

If you mean interstellar, but "intragalactic", it is possible but not terribly practical because of the distances involved, and the time required to cover those distances.

The same holds true for intergalactic travel, but worse so. An unmanned probe could be launched toward another galaxy, and if it were lucky enough to not have an incident along the way, it would get there.   The nearest galaxy is 2.2 million light years away. The people who sent the probe would be long dead and forgotten by the time it got there. In fact, the entire human race could be wiped out by then.

Answer 9

A hundred years ago, it was thought that traveling at high speeds in an automobile (like 60 miles per hour) we would burn up and loose control.  Heavier then air travel was impossible.  Man cannot survive in space.  All sorts of impossible things are remembered as quaint and primitive attitudes of our forefathers.

Is intergalactic travel impossible?  According to the rules of science that we understand, yeah.  Utterly impossible, but we keep learning new things.  One day our children will be vacationing on other planets and laughing about how quaint their forefathers were.

Cheers!

Answer 10

  Due to the time and distance it is hopelessly unattainable