If your galaxy is 26000 light years away could a person possibly travel there in less than 26000 years?

Answer 1

Any theoretical limit of distance may be travelled if travelling at the speed of light. This is one of the outcomes of relativity. It has been experimentally verified through experiment with radio-active decay where the particle decay was found to be longer under high velocity. It has to do with time dilation. For a person traveling, the reference frame that they measure length in is shortened. It is a necessary consequence needed to keep the speed of light a constant. Technically, the person travelling at the speed of light will manage to cross an infinite distance in zero time. The effect is as if lengths have contracted to zero. The observer measures in accordance to their own clock rates being stationary. The formula distance = rate x time illustrates this well enough. In our example, rate or the velocity of the speed of light is a constant 'C'. Therefore, distance = C x time, or rewritten, C = Distance / Time. The latter incarnation of the basic formula illustrates the ratio of Distance and Time are a fraction and both can be any number so as 'C' remains constant. So an accelerated frame of reference notices distance shrinks, the universe gets smaller and seconds tick slower (covering more distance per second) but the observer cannot notice the change in the rate of time passage due to any attempt to measure it also has to do with another calibrated clock which is also affected. Realistically, accelerating any mass like particle to this velocity is impossible due to it requiring an infinite amount of energy. This is also a consequence of relativity. The inertial energy also approaches infinities. This is why only the photon, a massless particle with a rest mass of zero travels at the speed of light.

At least, this is what the textbooks say!

There is some advanced work in theoretical propulsions using exotics (worm holes, negative mass, space-time folding) that appear also as solutions but remain outside our technological abilities at this time.

Personally, I am convinced that I am travelling at the speed of light with respect to the edge of the universe receding at the speed of light as well as the event horizon of a black hole. I seem to be okay so therefore, it would appear that there is curvature to the universe and these are the boundaries. One may envision a curved 4 dimensional space-time and these points are similar to the curvature of the Earth at the horizon. They are just a point that does not represent an edge. They are curved. But due to our inability to map anything beyond, truth remains in discovery and confirmation.

I strongly suspect the curvature horizon is where time stops for the observer and if time were to be described beyond that point, it would be travelling backward. However, don't expect to get back from this theoretical point as where you came from has shrunk basically out of existence from your hyper travelling joy ride.