4 ms·

Can there be a galactic empire?

• aruggirello 7y ago
  > See how quickly things escalated? 40,000 years and one can cover all the stars in the Milky Way. Uhm, no. You're still constrained by the top speed of your spaceships (0.1c as you say) into a sphere of 4,000 light years radius (that is, even if your spaceships somehow magically fork()ed upon reaching a new star system, which is obviously false), and the Milky Way's diameter of ~100,000 ly guarantees you'll only be able to colonize but a small fraction (granted, you'd be able to colonize the whole galaxy in ~1 million years). By the same reasoning no, you won't be able to colonize Andromeda too in another 1000 years (that would require you to travel 2 million ly in 1000 years BTW), or...the whole visible universe in a few hundred thousand years more!!! No.