If you could zoom through space in the speed of light, what place would you go to right now?
Ok, I’ll take this post sort of literally, because I am not as good at waxing poetic as perhaps I’d like to be. It is an interesting concept.
First, I never cease to be amazed at how large the universe really is. Heck, how large even the solar system even is. Millions of miles separate us from our nearest planet, and thousands of years lie between us and the nearest star at any speed we could currently travel. I’ve just read somewhere that the fastest moving object in human history was one of the Pioneer space crafts, clocking an incredible 52000 miles per hour. This may have been eclipsed by the Voyager craft, but I’m not sure.
I do often wish we could at least move at the speed of light, and survive touching down on another planet’s surface. Ah, to walk around on Mars. Or feel the steamy impossibility of Venus. And I thought it was cold? How about Neptune, or the recently demoted Pluto. I’d not feel much of any sun from that distance.
Ultimately, I’d like to achieve this concept of hyperspace that most science fiction writers employ to get their characters across vast interstellar distances. It’d be humanity’s next great chance to explore an area thought to be far beyond itself, and one in which we are not sure where or if other life exists. It is hard for me to believe though that in a sky filled with more stars than there are grains of sand down here, that something or someone else isn’t out there.
And if not? Well, I’ll start a colony on one of those far away worlds in which we’ll try to get it right. A utopia where war is not permitted, a place where we agree to settle disputes through peaceful, diplomatic discussion. And of course, a place where the sun always shines! Join me?