Earth-like planet spotted orbiting Sun’s closest star

Re:Earth-like planet spotted orbiting Sun’s closest star by anders_p on Friday February 11, 2022 @08:53AM (#30301475)

You'd have to get very close to the speed of light, before you'd see any really significant relativistic effects.

That just isn't practically doable with any technology within humanity's reach, probably for centuries. If it ever will be at all.

The amount of energy needed to propel anything at that speed is enormous.

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Re:Earth-like planet spotted orbiting Sun’s closest star by rbanffy on Friday February 11, 2022 @09:24AM (#30301802)

Unless my math is very wrong, at 0.9c the passenger perceived time is more or less half the perceived time from the departure point. That's already quite significant, although not something I could do over a vacation ;-)

In order to spend a leisurely "cruise-ship" week to Proxima you'd need to go very close to c. At that speed, even friction with a non-ideal vacuum is a problem :-D.

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