Distances in space are really, really big. The Voyager 1 spacecraft is heading out of our Solar System at 62,000 km per hour, but even at that speed, it would take it 77,000 years to reach the nearest star….

Hubble Ultra Deep Field

30 billion light-years away

Interpersonal distance. Hall described the interpersonal distances of man (the relative distances between people) in four distinct zones: (1) intimate space, (2) personal space, (3) social space, and (4) public space.

The speed of light Closest possible approach: 182 seconds, or 3.03 minutes. Closest recorded approach: 187 seconds, or 3.11 minutes. Farthest approach: 1,342 seconds, or 22.4 minutes.

Unpredictable weather events, especially dust storms, are one reason landing accuracy has suffered in previous missions. NASA engineers call the entry, descent and landing phase (EDL) of Mars entry missions the “seven minutes of terror”. In just seven minutes there are myriad ways entry can fail.

To summarize, according to the immutable laws of physics (specifically, Einstein’s Theory of Special Relativity), there’s no way to reach or exceed the speed of light.

Albert Einstein’s special theory of relativity famously dictates that no known object can travel faster than the speed of light in vacuum, which is 299,792 km/s. This speed limit makes it unlikely that humans will ever be able to send spacecraft to explore beyond our local area of the Milky Way.

The answer lies in tachyons. These are particles with imaginary mass that can be thought of as travelling backwards in time. They move faster than light, and slowing down to the speed of light would be as impossible for them as it is for us to accelerate to light speed.