The Milky Way seems to have become an invisible cage to humanity!

Exploring the universe and flying to the stars and oceans has always been a noble dream of mankind.

After thousands of years of development, humans have become the top of the Earth's food chain. Humans are increasingly curious about the vast universe. In order to better explore the universe and the stars, humans hope to go beyond the Milky Way and into the vast universe.

So could humans fly out of the Milky Way and explore the wider universe in their lifetime?

Humans hope to be able to travel out of the Milky Way and into the wider universe. (Illustration).

Whenever we look up at the stars, we often have the urge to imagine ourselves leaving our Solar System and exploring the wider universe. Recently, American astronomers conducted a simulation experiment to estimate the time it would take for a spacecraft to fly out of the Milky Way at superluminal speeds.

The giant Milky Way seems to have become an invisible cage, trapping us in it, and humans cannot escape even if they spend a lifetime. According to the latest observational data, the overall diameter of the Milky Way can reach 150,000 light years , and the Solar System is relatively close to the edge of the Milky Way.

Therefore, based on the current size of the Milky Way, even if we use a device that travels at the speed of light, after flying to the edge of the Solar System, we still need to fly about 40,000 light years to actually escape the Milky Way's range.

This is a sad number, and it seems that no matter how hard we try, we cannot escape this giant cage. As one of the pioneers of human space exploration, Voyager 1 is currently one of the farthest probes from Earth.

In fact, it is not impossible for humans to leave the Milky Way . But to achieve this goal, we need to solve the problem of gravity and significantly increase the flight speed to escape the gravitational constraints of celestial bodies.

At the current level of technology, humans can escape the Earth at space speed, which is the lowest speed at which Earth's gravity can be overcome. Space speed can be divided into several levels. Generally, what an airplane can reach is the first space speed, which is the speed that allows the airplane to fly and maintain orbit around the Earth. Satellite and spacecraft launches can reach the second space speed, which allows them to escape Earth's gravity and go into orbit further away.

To escape the gravitational pull of a more massive object, we need a higher cosmic speed. (Illustration).

According to calculations and practice, to leave the Earth and escape the shackles of Earth's gravity, a spacecraft needs to reach the second cosmic speed. However, the speed of light is the fastest speed in the universe that we currently know, about 300,000 km/s, known as the sixth cosmic speed .

In contrast, the Voyager 1 spacecraft has now reached the third cosmic speed. If it follows its established trajectory, it could reach its goal of flying out of the Solar System. However, this speed is still far from enough to escape the gravity of the Milky Way.

To escape the gravity of more massive objects, we need higher cosmic speeds. The orbital velocity of the Solar System is estimated to be about 230 km/s, while the escape velocity of the Milky Way is as high as 537 km/s.

To actually leave the Milky Way and escape its gravity, scientists have proposed the concept of a fourth cosmic speed. They believe that it would need to reach at least a fourth cosmic speed to fly out of the Milky Way. This means that the speed of the spacecraft itself would need to be at least 317 kilometers per second. Take the fastest spacecraft in the world, the Parker Solar Probe, for example, which has reached an incredible speed of 200 kilometers per second. While this exceeds the third cosmic speed of Voyager 1, it is still far from the speed needed to leave the Milky Way.

Voyager 1's speed is still far below the speed needed to leave the Milky Way. (Illustration photo).

In addition to speed, humans face enormous challenges. Compared to the rapidly changing planets in the universe, our lifespan is only a few decades, making time the main obstacle to our escape from the galaxy.

Take the fastest Parker Solar Probe, for example, which takes about 1,500 years to travel one light-year through space. Based on this speed calculation, assuming the state of the universe remains unchanged, it would take us nearly 7,000 years to travel to our nearest star system.

However, the fact is that most galaxies in the universe redshift at different rates, meaning that their distance from us is constantly increasing. This change is faster than the speed of light, so it will actually take you longer to get there.

Considering that our goal is to leave the Milky Way, traveling at the speed of light from our Solar System would take about 40,000 years to get there. In other words, even if we reached the sixth speed of the universe, the speed of light, it would still take us 40,000 years to leave the Milky Way.

For the Parker Solar Probe, even if it is lucky enough to avoid being torn apart by the planet's gravity during its flight, it will take hundreds of thousands of years to escape the galaxy. Until then, it is unknown whether humans will survive.

Most galaxies in the universe redshift at different rates.

Although some scientists have proposed the concept of superluminal speed, we must admit that this is still an extremely complex and difficult problem. According to their simulations, when the speed reaches 2083 times the speed of light, we can reach the Kuiper Belt in just ten seconds and take just over ten hours to reach a star that is only 4.2 light years away.

However, at this rate, it would take us at least 96 years to fly out of the Milky Way. Although the time has been greatly reduced compared to tens of thousands of years ago, it is still a number that is almost impossible to achieve in a human lifetime.

In other words, even if technology reaches a certain level, leaving the galaxy is still not a task that can be completed in just one generation.