2 ms·
If one wants to get a sense of how far things are, it's probably more helpful to imagine all bodies besides the moon as being infinitely far away. At 4km per h
by meric 11y ago
If one wants to get a sense of how far things are, it's probably more helpful to imagine all bodies besides the moon as being infinitely far away.
At 4km per hour, it takes 11 years of continuous walking to walk the distance between Earth and the Moon; 4252 years to the Sun; 214041 years to Pluto; 1.17 billion years to Alpha Centauri.
Assuming single celled organisms travel very slowly, that means if you have been walking your entire lifetime to Alpha Centauri, and your parents did the same and gave birth to you on their way to Alpha Centauri, and their parents gave birth to them on their way to Alpha Centauri, ancestors all the way back to the first biotic life form, you'd be just about arriving, now.
It does also mean, the sum of all distance traveled by all lifeforms on Earth is longer than the distance between Earth to Alpha Centauri and back by quite a few times, that can likely be measured in the billions.