Unfortunately, the chances of that happening within our lifetimes is very slim. Unless, of course, we manage to conquer death through life-extending drugs or cryogenics; but that is a topic for another day.
The vastness of space is often incomprehensible to the human mind. The idea of distances of trillions of light-years is impossible for humans to understand because we have nothing in our lives to compare it to. But, to get an idea of how vast our universe is, take this into consideration: the nearest star system to our Sun is about 4.3 light-years away. For those of you who don't know, a light-year is the distance a wave of electromagnetic radiation (light) travels in one year. One light year is about 6 TRILLION miles.
That means that star system, Alpha Centauri, is about 25.8 trillion miles away. If you were to shrink our sun down to the size of a basketball, which is about a billionth of its true size, and placed it in San Francisco, California, Alpha Centauri would be located somewhere near London. Now consider that astronomers believe there are somewhere between 200-400 billion star systems in our Milky Way Galaxy.
The Milky Way and the 40 closest galaxies are what astronomers call "Local Group", which is a cluster of galaxies. Our "Local Group" is just one of hundreds of clusters located in the "Local Supercluster", which is a cluster of clusters. Our "Local Supercluster" is just one of millions of superclusters.
Watch this video if you truly want your mind blown:
Now imagine for a moment the impact this concept has on our existence. There are HUNDREDS OF BILLIONS of galaxies, each with HUNDREDS OF BILLIONS of star systems. The idea that we are alone in this universe is absolutely absurd. I truly believe there is life out there, but that belief may mean nothing when that life may be out of our reach.
But there is a possibility that despite our current laws and theories of physics, it IS possible to travel at faster-than-light speeds. No more than 400 years ago was it FACT that the Earth was flat and we lived at the center of the universe. But times change, and with them come new ideas and new laws. Humans 400 years from now could very well be sitting around the dinner table laughing about how idiotic our concept of the universe was.
And despite the fact that we may never meet alien life during our lifetimes, the search goes on. The Search for Extra-Terrestrial Intelligence, or SETI, is the collective name for all of the projects we as humans undertake to search for alien life. Every day we find more and more extra-solar planets (planets that orbit other star systems), each with the possibility to contain life. Whether it's microscopic, or developed and intelligent, the possibilities are endless.
We'll just have to wait and see.
