BLACK HOLE FOUND NEAR OUR GALAXY!!(it could be the end of the world!)

[short recoil]

I think it just goes to show that a fair amount of people just dont grasp the immense distances involved, ridiculous distances.. stupendous, even I cant fully grasp the distances envolved.. the closest ive come to that is to look up at the orion nebula and think 'shit, it would take me 60'000 years to get there travelling at 54 billion miles in one year'.

Hehe, like trying to comprehend nothingness the brain hates thinking of such distances because it has never experienced them.
It is slightly disheartening to think that if we can never break light speed travel then we really don't stand too much chance of successful inter stelar travel.
Going at the speed of light it would take 4.2 years to get to the nearest star, having said that the energy required for light speed travel is ENORMOUS.
4.2 years, reminds me of the sort of times for early travelers round the world in boats, mabye just mabye there is some way we can get to the stars fast.

Until we know more it is impossible to say.

 

[kirovman]

Hehe, like trying to comprehend nothingness the brain hates thinking of such distances because it has never experienced them.
It is slightly disheartening to think that if we can never break light speed travel then we really don't stand too much chance of successful inter stelar travel.
Going at the speed of light it would take 4.2 years to get to the nearest star, having said that the energy required for light speed travel is ENORMOUS.
4.2 years, reminds me of the sort of times for early travelers round the world in boats, mabye just mabye there is some way we can get to the stars fast.

Until we know more it is impossible to say.

Yes, thinking logarithimically is not something the human brain is accustomed to...it can handle 2 or 3 orders of magnitude either way, then iit gets a bit blurred.
Although it's not really important for you to directly comprehend it anyway, when you can construct a mathematical model to simulate it for you.
It's one of the reasons we have advanced maths, to comprehend in a quantitative way things that would otherwise be incomprehensible.