In: Physics
Can a person, in principle, travel from Earth to the galactic center (which is about 2.30
Of course there is no reason why a person could not travel
there. However, one thing you must keep in mind is that it is not
just as simple as traveling 2.30x10^104 light-years, because the
center of the universe (if we could locate it) would be moving
relative to us. So by the time you traveled the distance, it is no
longer there and you would have to travel even further. So we
cannot answer this without first knowing how fast it is moving (or
rather how fast we are moving away from it).
BUT, assuming now that you want some kind of numerical answers, we
can simply discuss how long it would take a person to complete a
2.30x10^104 light-year journey (which will NOT take you to the
center of the universe due to the argument above).
Yes it is theoretically possible for a traveler to make a trip of
ANY distance within their lifetime. However, to someone who stays
behind on Earth that trip could be as much as a thousand
lifetimes.
The reasoning behind this is that to the traveler the faster he/she
goes the shorter the distance becomes, they don't need to travel AT
the speed of light they just need to get close because as the speed
gets closer to that of light, the distance in the direction of
travel becomes infinitesimally small due to length contraction. But
by the same theory, the people who stay on earth experience a MUCH
longer time than the traveler because of time dilation.
I could not calculate the answer to your 32y question. This is
because the speed required is somewhere around
0.999999999999999...% the speed of light, which my calculator
simply gives me that the speed is exactly 'c', so this gives a
value for 'gamma' of zero, which leaves the distance as
undefined.