@Brandon9000,
Absolutely impossible. First off, Einstein clearly stated in his theories on special and general relativities that breaking the speed of light barrier was fantasy, and he did not entertain the idea. These people do not speak as one who has studied the fields in astronomy. I've written countless articles, and even if we could break the light speed barrier by 1000x its maximum, reaching other galaxies would still take millions of years...even eons, and even hundreds of eons.
To say we currently lack the ability to space travel is a horrendous understatement, and the prerequistires to exoplanetary habitation are far more unimaginable than we can currently understand, though we know more than enough to realize that the odds of finding a single suitable planet even half as good as earth are one in infinity. With those infinitesimal arguments aside, currently our Voyager probes average 35,000-39,000 mph and are just about the fastest manmade objects ever created (except for Helios which used a gravity slingshot), so just for you I drew up a list of where we are now in terms of space travel and where we'd need to be in order to make it even to Proxima Cenatauri within 1 day of constant space travel. Keep in mind that we'd first need about $108,000,000,000,000 (trillion) for the antimatter fuel and ship parts, plus another 75-100 years to build it and perfect it. If all ~340 million Americans gave NASA $350,000 today, NASA would still be short money to make a starship building project work out.
1) Proxima Centauri-- 4.243 ± 0.002 ly//24,925,371,582,299 miles away
--At 35,000 mph-- 81,353.6 years, that's 1,016.9 eighty year long human generations
--At 150,000 mph-- 18,928.5 years, that's over 3× the length of all recorded human history!!
--At 35,500,000 mph (9,300 mi/s // 5% light speed)-- 85 years, that's exactly 1,014.286× our current max speed of 35,000 mph from Voyager
--At 670,616,629.3843951 mph (1c//Light Speed)-- 4.243 years
--At 1,700c//Star Trek's Warp 9.2//1.14005x10^12 mph-- 21.86 hours, which still takes nearly one full solar day for our closest star to earth!!!
2) Gliese 581c 20.3 ± 0.3 ly//119,336,095,075,627.08 miles away
--At 35,000 mph-- 388,957.65 years, humans learned to walk upright in less than 1/3 this amount of time!!
--At 150,000 mph-- 90,756.78 years, humans learned to walk upright in this amount of time
--At 35,500,000 mph (9,300 mi/s // 5% light speed)-- 383.48 years, America could be born and grow past us now in this amount of time
--At 670,616,629.3843951 mph (1c//Light Speed)-- 20.3 years, a newborn turns into a legal adult and can drink booze in other countries haha
--At 1,700c//Star Trek Warp 9.2//1.14005x10^12 mph-- 4.3615 days 104.677 hours. Nearly a week just to get to one of our closest so-called habitable planets (aside form the fact that if a human stepped foot on the planet he'd crushed squashed from the gravity)
HD 85512b 36 ly//211,630,513,434,609.6 miles away
--At 35,000 mph-- 689,777.1 years, same as traveling around Earth 9,442,987,081 times (9.5 billion)
--At 150,000 mph-- 160,947.9 years
--At 35,500,000 mph (9,300 mi/s // 5% light speed)-- 680.06 years, Rome arose and expanded past Greece in this amount of time!!!
--At 670,616,629.3843951 mph (1c//Light Speed)-- 36 years, it would take decades even though you're traveling at 983,571.05616 ft per millisecond!!
--At 1,700c//Star Trek Warp 9.2//1.14005x10^12 mph-- 7.735 days, at the speed of light it'd still take over a week of non-stop light beam speed travel!
Traverse Milky Way Galaxy (our galaxy) 120,000 ly// 705,435,044,782,032,000 miles diameter
--At 35,000 mph-- 2,299,257,015.032 years, this means that if you left about 3 billion years ago you'd arrive in time to see the first single celled organism be born on earth!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
--At 150,000 mph-- 536,493,303.51 years, this means that if our ancestors left BEFORE the dinosaur age they'd be just arriving today
--At 35,500,000 mph (9,300 mi/s // 5% light speed)-- 2,266,873.1 years, yes this means millions of years, so if you left 2 1/4 million years ago you'd arrive in time to witness genus Australopithecus become extinct and the rise of proto-humankind
--At 670,616,629.3843951 mph (1c//Light Speed)-- 120,000 years, humans would learn to walk upright and be millennia older than us today in this amount of time
--At 1,700c//Star Trek Warp 9.2//1.14005x10^12 mph-- 70.588 years 87.5% of the average American lifespan (~80 yrs). The average astronaut is not capable of getting his "wings" usually until around mid-40's ot later, so this is obviously a no-go. Sadly, the world average age is only 66.76 years.
Reach Andromeda Galaxy (one of our closest neighbor galaxies) 2,500,000 ly//14,696,563,432,959,000,000 miles away (14.7 quintillion miles)
--At 35,000 mph-- 47,901,187,813.2 years, so if you went on this voyage nearly 50 billion years ago, the earth itself still wouldn't be born for another 33 billion more years once you arrived!!!
--At 150,000 mph-- 11,176,943,823.1 years, humans wouldn't be born for 3+ billion more years
--At 35,500,000 mph (9,300 mi/s // 5% light speed)-- 47,226,523.2 years, Proto-primates became primates in about this amount of time
--At 670,616,629.3843951 mph (1c//Light Speed)-- 2,500,000 years, arrive at the time Australopithecus went extinct
--At 1,700c//Star Trek Warp 9.2//1.14005x10^12 mph-- 1,470.59 years, Romans would be born on Palatine Hill in 751 B.C. and their Empire would fall utterly in less time than this (~1,227 yrs)
I've written a list also detailing planetary prerequisites for humanoid life as well, and the idea of forcibly "terrforming" a planet is zero to none when you do the studying for it.
STAR REQUIREMENTS--
Star must have a stable habitable zone-- that is, a barrier around the star which allows a planet with sufficient atmospheric pressure within this barrier to form water (and thus, life). A planet must be close enough to benefit from this barrier but far enough away to be at a safe distance (around 93,000,000 miles average distance).
Proper "aging" orbit: Because many stars both move at hundreds of thousands of miles per hour (planets do not!) and because their luminosity increases as they age, these two prime factors must be taken into consideration as well when determining the eligability of a star in a system to support life on a nearby planet and achieving a proper, lasting orbit. Assuming the planet is both capable of supporting water and any life at all (more below), it must have a proper orbit around its sun and properly drift away from the sun as it ages or else the habitable zone will become unstable. This eventual instability would mean that either all life on the planet would be destroyed or that life would be prevented from forming to begin with.
The sun itself must be a specific class of star and to be a stable sun range between early F, G (our Sun), to a mid-K type star. The star cannot be highly variable nor magnetically unstable. Others stars are either too dim and too cool (red dwarfs), or put out too much radiation and kinetic energies (such as a blue giant), which would also destroy life.
This "sun" must be a main-sequence sun that will remain stable for billions of years for evolution to take place (evolution means we all life originated from rocks...literally, read about it in full before you endorse it!)
Low stellar variation
High metallicity (star have a high metal content allows for better fusion, longer life, balanced and stable luminosity, and perhaps even a more stable habitable zone.
BASIC PLANETARY REQUIREMENTS--
Axial tilt of 23-24 degrees is necessary. This lets the weather be relatively stable and thus becomes a candidate for life. Notice the degree of tilt is only a 1 degree difference? This is because even a couple degrees of more or less tilt would dramatically change the weather patterns on the planet!
Composition of the planet surface must be similar, if not virtually identical, to earth.
Atmosphere must have a proper ratio of carbon, hydrogen, oxides (like oxygen gas and ozone), carbon oxides, and nitrogen gas, neon, krypton, and many more.
A molten iron planetary core; our planet would be harmed by the suns radioactive rays without an iron core to protect us.
According to evolutionary theory, the planet must be stable for at least 100 million years for life to form - most planets would not follow this. On the same token, evolutionary theory admits that while it might take 100,000,000 years for evolution to culminate into "us," it may have taken well over +4,000,000,000 years just for evolution to even begin. The planet then, might require as much as four billion years of stability to allow for human life to safely develop and flourish before plantary death.
This new "earth" must be the same size as earth. Planets too small and too large cannot support atmospheres, have far too strong of a gravitational pull, cannot support water formation or life, and often do not have iron cores.
A moon that is about 1/3 the size of the planet must be present and at the proper distance from the planet and the sun in order to regulate the planet's orbit around its sun.
This planet and its moon must both orbit the sun in a way that it can have a good path in order to properly ellipse around the sun.
Neither the moon nor the planet itself should be moving too fast or all life would die or fail to form. Furthermore, the moon and planet must maintain orbit around the star itself which may be moving in excesses of 3,000,000 mph!!! (Earth moves at about 66,600 mph and the Sun moves at 150,000+ mph
Enough flat land for effective agriculture and various forms of plant and animal life, water, as well as separate areas for large bodies of water for sea life, continental drift, and techtonic activity.
Have steady but limited volcanic activity and volcanic hotzones, so the planet would not be a molten wasteland, and also so the core of the planet would remain stable (we've all heard of Krakatoa!)
Must have enough mass to create a gravitational field around the planet to "hold stuff down." Wouldn't wanna float away, now would ya?
That same gravitational field must be around 1g. Gravity that is even a little higher or lower than 1g would both kill many forms of basic and complex life and also prevent water from forming on the planet (hence, no life). 1g gravity is an absoulte must.
The gravity must also surround the entire planet, as to hold onto an atmosphere over eons, but not so much that the atmosphere is too thick and therefore the surface pressure is too high
A molten iron core is necessary to create a global magnetic field to protect the planet from cosmic radiation, deadly cosmic rays and particles, and deadly atomic astronomical forces (atoms in space are highly volatile and far more dangerous than on earth).
gravity is around 1g-- gravity that is even a little higher or lower than this both kills many forms of basic and complex life and prevents water from forming (which means no life!)
More on the stable habitable zone: Earth is at the right distance from the Sun to have liquid water form on its surface and for the atmosphere to be at a reasonable temperature for life to occur. It also doesn't stray too far from this "optimal" distance from the sun, making the temperature stable. Unfortunately, any planetary to support carbon based lifeforms must be similar, if not identical. to earth.
COSMOLOGICAL NEIGHBORHOOD REQUIREMENTS--
No large stellar bodies may be present within or near the habitable zone, which means nothing too large can be near the planet or its moon at any point along its orbit around the sun. Neither a planet, water, nor life could form due to the planetary scale disruptions in gravitational forces from any large stellar object(s), even if the disruptions were relatively brief. This means that if Jupiter or Venus were our satellite instead of the moon, no life on earth would exist.
A solar system is required to counter balance the moon and "earth," or else the planets would sling shot into or away from the sun. Our solar system and all of its planets (and their satellites) seem to be required to preserve the "earth"
This new solar system hosting life on the new "earth" must belong to a galaxy and also to have proper distance from galactic core (like the milky way) to prevent the system itself from colliding with other systems or from drifting through endless space and into inevitable destructive forces (blackholes, "super-stars" (like blue supergiants, magnetars, neutron stars, etc...) All stellar objects within the Milky Way are hanging on to each other by gravitational forces, preventing planets, stars, and systems from drifting away into space. (Of course, this is happening anyway as the universe expands and distances between stellar objects exponentially increase faster than the speed of light...read my article on Relativity and Universal Expansion for more information on this!)
Assuming you even read this entire post of mine, now do you see? There is no hope for humankind to either space travel in any practical means nor is there any possibility of terrforming other planets.
Don't listen to the atheistic garbage pop-idol-astronomers spew. We did not spontaneously come into existence, WE WERE CREATED BY GOD. The odds of humanlife and the universe coming into existence spontaneously is like saying a human could throw a dart here at earth across the entire 96,000,000,000 light year universe and hit a bullseye on a 1-inch dartboard on his first try.
it just might blow your mind
