NASA, the world renowned “US Space Agency” has just announced their latest amaz- ing discovery of seven earth size planets orbiting the Star, life sustaining Sun like our own. All seven planets are placed much closer, unlike our own planetary system, with strong possibility of life-sustaining atmosphere with water and oxygen on at least two planets.
With this extraordinary discovery, NASA predicts that it is not the question of if but when we discover another planet like life sustaining Earth in our vast and ever expand- ing Milky Way galaxy. So the puzzle is whether we will ever be able to visit such planets. Unfortunately the answer is emphatic no, as these planets are some 40 light years away. If we launch a rocket now, travelling at 30k miles per hour, the best speed achieved so far, it will take a million years to reach such planets.
But no one should doubt the ingenuity of human race. It is not mathematically impossible to invent a rocket that could travel at the speed of light that is 187,000 miles per second, a mind-boggling speed. But even this speed is not enough for interplane- tary travel. Could it be possible to travel even faster, the answer is definitely yes, using magnetic field technology. But it will definitely not happen in our life time, not for at least one millennium. Then time scale is irrelevant, a million years is no more than an hour in universal term.
Kumudini Valambia
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