How Long Does It “REALLY” Take To Get To Andromed At 4.5 Times Light Speed

Currently at the speed we can travel, it would take 4 billion years to reach our close neighbor and only 2.5 million years at only one times the speed of light. But, what about 4.5 times light speed…

How long would it take you to get to the Andromeda Galaxy traveling at 4.5 times the speed of light? Let’s work it out.

In the interest of keeping on theme, let’s use light speed, but multiplied 4 1/2 times to get to Andromeda. Now, in real time life, the speed of light is a bit over 186,000 miles per second. And while we have not discovered how to travel anywhere close to light speed yet, these numbers and actual findings will be based on the real life speed of light as we know it.

Since we know that the average distance of Neptune from earth is about 4.5 billion kilometers, we can work out that that is a speed of around 2.5 by 10 to the 10 meters per second. Super fast! When we actually put in what the speed of light is, which is 186,000 miles per second; 671 million miles per hour. That works out at 83.3 times the speed of light.

So that means the traveling would not be linear. Is it random?

Well, let’s take the cube root. Turns out the cube root gives us 4.37. That is close enough to 4.5 times the speed of light for me. So that uses the cubic system we find and the 4.5 times the speed of light is the equivalent of a speed of around 2.5 by 10 to the 10 meters per second. Now that speed would get you
to the sun in 6.04 seconds.

It’ll get you to Mars in 15 seconds, to Neptune in three minutes. You’d catch up to the edge of interstellar space in 16 minutes. You’d reach the Oort cloud in 3.3 hours, break free of the Oort cloud in seven days, pass by the Orion Nebula in about 16 years, be careful!! You’d break out of the Milky Way and into intergalactic space in 11,000 years or so.

And finally reach the Andromeda Galaxy in around 30,500 years from now!! Currently we are only capable of traveling at 24,790 miles per hour.  We’re gonna need a faster ship… Currently it would take us a bit over 4 billion years to get to Andromeda.

At just light speed alone, 1 times the speed of light, it would then be 2.5 million years. Much shorter than the 4 billion we can do now.

In summation; It’ll get you to Mars in 15 seconds, to Neptune in three minutes. You’d catch up to the edge of interstellar space in 16 minutes. You’d reach the Oort cloud in 3.3 hours, break free of the Oort cloud in seven days, pass by the Orion Nebula in about 16 years, be careful!!

You’d break out of the Milky Way and into intergalactic space in 11,000 years or so.

And finally reach the Andromeda Galaxy in around 30,500 years from now!!

Currently at the speed we can travel, it would take 4 billion years to reach our close neighbor and only 2.5 million years at only one times the speed of light. But, what about 4.5 times light speed…