A Journey To Alpha Centauri

The Alpha Centauri system is a fascinating and complex star system located in the southern sky, approximately 4.37 light-years away from Earth. It consists of three stars - Alpha Centauri A, Alpha Centauri B, and Proxima Centauri - and is the closest star system to our own solar system. The Alpha Centauri system has long captured the imagination of scientists and science fiction writers alike, and has been the subject of numerous studies and missions aimed at better understanding its structure and properties. With the potential for habitable planets and the prospect of interstellar travel, the Alpha Centauri system holds great promise for the future of space exploration and our understanding of the universe.
Join me as we see every aspect of this trip and elaborate on many mind-blowing interstellar travel facts! 

Alpha Centauri is one of the closest stars to Earth, and it's potential as a future home for humans is a topic of much debate.
we'll explore this topic and explore what research is being done to explore the possibility of human life on Alpha Centauri.
this technology is still in its infancy and is currently not feasible for interstellar travel.
Another option is to use solar sails. Solar sails are a type of spacecraft propulsion system that uses the pressure of sunlight to produce thrust.

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Credits: Nasa/Shutterstock/Storyblocks/Elon Musk/SpaceX/ESA/ESO/ Flickr

Video Chapters:
00:00 Intro
01:10 Sights of proxima centauri
03:24 preparing for the journey!
15:20 The Journey to alpha centauri
20:18 Arriving at Alpha Centauri
27:20 VideoGames on Proxima Centauri
32:06 Outro

#insanecuriosity #alphacentauri #astronomy

[shutup-gcyk]

The time dilation examples are wrong, the values are inverted. Time aboard the spaceship would pass slower than it would on Earth, due to the higher velocity of movement of the former.

[josephsmith]

As a Small Boy, Six Decades ago, I asked an Old Black Gentleman about the Night Sky and He explained that this was called " Alpha Centauri " ! Awesome !

[jaxx]

16:53 time dilation has the inverse effects of how you described, as you speed up, time slows down

[jbx]

Can you imagine thousands of years of "Are we there yet? Are we there yet?"

[puskzcs]

We MIGHT one day make it to Mars for a SHORT visit and that is it. Space is brutally hostile and it is impossible to maintain the delicate balance for human survival that far out.

[carlsaganlives]

How come turtles or parrots aren't mentioned as potential passengers on deep space projects with their long life expectancy? They eat less and are lighter than humans, too.

[kj]

Funny whenever they show rockets design for high speed interstellar travel they never show /explain how the rocket would slow down once it gets to the planet. Your moving at a percentage of light, your going to need a lot / the same or equal amount of energy to slow down in the vacuum of space.

[jssomewhere]

Reality is we most likely will not attempt sending people to another system until we have established ourselves in our entire home system. Allowing refuel, or repair at a significant chunk of the distance.

[OLDCHEMIST]

Even if the technology to go at a significant fraction of the speed of light were to be developed, there would still be many problems:
1. No-one knows what parts of the spacecraft might break down, so probably at least two replacement parts of every essential component would be needed, which would be an enormous amount of extra weight.
2. There would have to be plenty of emergency procedures for the possible holing of the ship - any leak would have to be detected and mended very speedily.
3. Even though the craft would have to be almost perfectly hermitically sealed, some loss of materials would take place and so there would have to be extra supplies to cover this.
4. There are numerous possible health problems which could occur due to the journey and all the others which would happen naturally such as cancer. How would these be dealt with? What if the journey were compromised by too many of the crew being ill or dead to guide the ship.
5. What provisions would there be for unrest, say some of the crew want to end the journey and return to Earth? How would any social unrest be dealt with?

These are just problems off the top of my head. There will be many problems only experts know of and many which the first human explorers discover for themselves .

[BrianStDenis-pjtq]

At present, the closest star and exoplanet to us are impossibly far away. The fastest man made object so far, Parker Solar Probe, which doesn't carry any humans on it, and is using the sun's gravity for acceleration - would take 11, 000 years to reach proxima centauri. Even if we could go 100 times faster, that is still over 100 years to get there. Humans don't live long enough to reach other stars in any foreseeable future. And, its interesting to think what sort of alien life form could and would make the journey from where they originate to here, considering the incredible distance. They'd need incredible tech and super long life spans, neither of which we have.

[Payne..]

People commenting saying humans will never be able to do it but look how far humans have come since the early 2000s technology wise it will only get more advanced.

[brianw]

17:02 Isn't that time dilation backwards? Wouldn't it be 1 year on the spacecraft and 10 years for the earth observer? If time slows the closer to light speed then it seems the traveler would arrive back to a much older earth bound twin.

[jbx]

We're talking about a trip of 11, 000 years. That's longer than the time between the invention of writing and now. 11, 000 years ago we were hunter-gatherers. 11, 000 years from now, who knows what society and technology will look like on Earth. Nobody can predict that. Nobody could have predicted our current society 11, 000 years ago.

One thing is certain: a group of people aboard a spaceship won't change much, societally, in that time, and definitely not the same changes as we who remain on Earth. The people who travel to Proxima Centauri won't even be members of the same civilization that remain here on Earth. Communication will be almost nil, since any exchange of messages will have a roundtrip timelapse of almost nine years. And with the cultural differences that would arise, what would we even talk about?

[stephenfowles]

Hundreds of years? What sane person would condemn their children (and subsequent generations), to spending their entire life trapped inside a metal box, just to take some rock samples?

[MrAndyLocksmith]

To put this into perspective, the furthest humans have been from Earth is the Moon.
The Moon, approximately 1.3 light seconds.
Proxima Centauri, approximately 4.37 light years.

Or roughly 1/106, 079, 908 th of the way there!

[mbisson]

Don't sign me up. My wife wants me home for dinner.

BTW: your example of time dilation had the number of years reversed. 😳

[trebell]

Steam populations, plenty of both water & heat in space?

[jbx]

Imagine getting there and discovering there are no habitable places to land. Like...not even remotely habitable.

[jozefgoethals]

When one side permanently facing the stat and the other constant darkness then there's a bearable temperature in the twilight zone between the 2 sides

[mikeburkhart]

The Jupiter 2 left Earth to go there back in the 1960s and still hasn't got there...."Danger! Danger, Will Robinson!! DANGER!!"