Interstellar distances are difficult to conceive. Our nearest star is Proxima Centauri, a red dwarf that lies 4.3 light years away – that’s more than 266,000 times the distance from Earth to the Sun. Even if our fastest spacecraft, Voyager 1, which is flying at 18 kilometres (11 miles) per second, were headed that way, it would still take 80,000 years to get there. For humans to
