How Long Would It Take To Travel The Solar System?
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00:00While we may just be a speck in the Milky Way, and while the Milky Way may be just a
00:05speck on the landscape of the universe, our solar system is still extremely big.
00:10As we all know, it's the group of local planets, asteroids, and other small objects
00:14that orbit our sun, and it's all thanks to the solar system that the delicate balance
00:19of life on our planet is possible.
00:22This is Unveiled, and today we're answering the extraordinary question, how long would
00:26it take to travel the solar system?
00:29Do you need the big questions answered?
00:31Are you constantly curious?
00:32Then why not subscribe to Unveiled for more clips like this one?
00:35And ring the bell for more thought-provoking content!
00:38So first off, what are we dealing with?
00:41Travelling outwards from the sun, we have Mercury, Venus, Earth, and Mars.
00:46After Mars comes the asteroid belt, a chaotic cluster made mostly of rock and metal.
00:52Then come the gas giants, Jupiter and Saturn, followed by the icy outer planets, Uranus
00:58and Neptune.
00:59Beyond Neptune lie trans-Neptunian objects, including things like comets, dust clouds,
01:05natural satellites, and dwarf planets like Eris and Pluto.
01:09Finally, and far beyond everything else, there's the Oort Cloud, a theoretical cloud consisting
01:15of space dust and debris that marks the solar system's end.
01:19While experts firmly believe that this cloud exists, no direct observations have been made
01:24of it.
01:25It's just too far away, which is why technically it's theoretical.
01:29But just how far does our solar system spread?
01:32What would you have to do to reach its outer edges?
01:35And how long would it actually take?
01:37Luckily, we have a nifty little device called Voyager 1 offering up a major point of reference,
01:43traversing the outer reaches of the solar system as we speak.
01:46The Voyager 1 space probe was launched by NASA on September 5th, 1977, and is currently
01:52still travelling at around 38,000 miles per hour.
01:56It reached Saturn, its primary target, in November 1980.
02:00But on August 25th, 2012, nearly 35 years after its launch, it made even greater history
02:07by becoming the first spacecraft to enter the interstellar medium, a fancy term for
02:12the space between star systems in a galaxy.
02:15More specifically, Voyager 1 broke from the reach of the sun's solar winds and entered
02:20into deep space.
02:22It's currently at a distance of 24.3 billion kilometres, or 15 billion miles, from the
02:28sun… and is so far away from us that it takes a radio signal travelling at the speed
02:33of light roughly 22 hours to beam between the spacecraft and our home planet.
02:38All of which is pretty impressive.
02:40But while the monumental achievements of Voyager 1 should never be underestimated, we're
02:45still very far from making an even semi-significant dent into the solar system as a whole.
02:50It would take Voyager 1 another 300 years or so to reach just the inner edge of the
02:55interstellar Oort cloud, and up to 40,000 years to breach the cloud entirely and finally
03:01break free from the solar system completely.
03:04In truth, the solar system, and space in general, is just way too big for earthly measurements
03:09like miles and metres to really make sense.
03:12Instead, to measure distance in space, astronomers use something called an astronomical unit,
03:17with one unit equaling the average distance from Earth to the sun, which is 150 million
03:22kilometres, or 93 million miles.
03:25If you were to somehow drive a car to the sun at highway speeds of 100 kilometres per
03:30hour, which is just over 60 miles per hour, then you'd eventually reach your destination
03:35in one and a half million hours, or 171 years.
03:40Without some major technological breakthroughs, no one's surviving that.
03:44But let's say you splashed the cash, pulled some strings, and took the fastest air-breathing
03:49crewed aircraft in the world, the Lockheed SR-71 Blackbird.
03:54Travelling at constant top speed, it would now take you just 42,492 hours to reach the
04:00sun, or just under five years.
04:02In contrast, definitely doable… although again, it's a journey that would definitely
04:07kill you.
04:08But let's be serious, because again, even the distance from Earth to the sun is tiny
04:13when compared to the size of the entire solar system.
04:16So, to answer the question at the top of this video, we need to set our sights much further
04:21out.
04:22Way, way out there is everyone's favourite dwarf planet, Pluto.
04:26Pluto ranges from 30 to 49 astronomical units away from the sun, so at its average distance
04:31it's almost six billion kilometres away, 3.7 billion miles.
04:36Light travelling from the sun takes about eight minutes to reach Earth, but it takes
04:40about five and a half hours to reach Pluto.
04:43It's a long, long way away… and so, if driving a car at highway speeds, it would
04:48take you 6,850 years to get there.
04:52But as we've established, we still need to go further.
04:55The outer edges of the Oort Cloud are about 100,000 astronomical units away, or about
05:011.87 light-years, which is 17 trillion kilometres, or nine trillion miles, give or take.
05:09And yet we still could go just a little further.
05:12Amazingly, the sun's gravity can capture objects as far out as two light-years away.
05:17This means that the very last parts of the Oort Cloud could still theoretically be shaped
05:21by the sun's gravity.
05:23By some measures, perhaps it isn't until we reach the halfway point between our sun
05:27and the next nearest star, Proxima Centauri, that we've truly, and incontestably, left
05:33our system behind.
05:35So what does that all mean for our question?
05:37In straightforward astrological terms, we can say that it would take you nearly two
05:41years to reach the outer boundary of our solar system… if you were travelling at the speed
05:46of light.
05:47But, of course, we can't do that.
05:49Let's hop back into our hypothetical space car, then, and go for the ultimate cruise.
05:54And you know what?
05:55Let's do one better.
05:56Let's skip the standard highway driving and up the stakes.
06:00Let's pretend that we're in the fastest street-legal car in the world, the Bugatti
06:05Chiron.
06:06And let's imagine we can travel at its max speed of 489 kilometres, or 304 miles
06:12per hour.
06:13Heading for the Oort Cloud, travelling at the top speed of the fastest car in the world,
06:18it would still be between four and four and a half million years before you've finished
06:23your trip.
06:24And that's without stopping for fuel or snacks.
06:26Now, let's again pilot the fastest ever crewed aircraft, the Lockheed SR-71 Blackbird.
06:32The Blackbird's more than seven times faster than the Chiron at top speed, so the trip
06:37does shorten.
06:38But it'd still take an eye-watering 550,000 years to reach the fabled finish line.
06:44Finally, let's say we hitched a ride on NASA's New Horizons probe, which left Earth
06:49at a staggering, and then record-breaking, 58,536 kilometres per hour, or 36,372 miles
06:58per hour.
06:59It took this probe nine years to fly by Pluto.
07:02Again, when that happened, it was a monumental achievement that should in no way be overshadowed.
07:07But it still shows just how difficult it would be to travel any further.
07:11Even were New Horizons to have continued its unprecedented pace indefinitely, it still
07:16wouldn't have breached the Oort Cloud for another 30,000 years or more.
07:20That's thirty whole millennia for a relatively tiny vehicle that could never carry a pilot.
07:26Even if we throw all physical sense by the wayside, then, it's still an almost incomprehensible
07:31journey.
07:32For now, what are the things we know?
07:34First, how long it takes to travel the solar system depends entirely on what you want to
07:39travel in.
07:40In just your standard supercar, four and a half million years.
07:44In a high-spec aircraft, 550,000 years.
07:47On a state-of-the-art NASA probe, 30,000.
07:51Even if you could somehow move at the speed of light itself, it would take almost two
07:55years to get from A to B. But one, that's impossible, and two, that's cheating.
08:00Short of building wormholes, this just isn't a trip that will ever be done quickly.
08:04No matter how you travel, you'd be long dead and space dust, way before you'd even
08:09considered getting even relatively close to even the inner edges of the Oort Cloud.
08:15And remember, no matter how daunting the solar system may seem when viewed in this way, it's
08:20actually very small in the wider view.
08:23It's just one small speck in the Milky Way galaxy, which is but a tiny grain in the grand
08:29scheme of the entire universe.
08:31So next time you're complaining about your regular daily commute, remember this video
08:36and relax.
08:37What do you think?
08:38Is there anything we missed?
08:39Let us know in the comments, check out these other clips from Unveiled, and make sure you
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