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Our current propulsion technologies are woefully inadequate for interstellar journeys. The Voyager 1 spacecraft, the fastest human-made object, would take 75,000 years to reach Proxima Centauri at its current speed. Even the fastest probe ever launched, the Parker Solar Probe, would take over 6,500 years to make the journey.

Overcoming the Speed of Light Barrier

The speed of light poses a fundamental limit on interstellar travel. As an object's speed approaches the speed of light, its mass increases exponentially, requiring ever-greater amounts of energy to accelerate it further. Theoretical solutions like nuclear propulsion, matter-antimatter annihilation, and light sails have been proposed, but they remain firmly in the realm of speculation, requiring decades of development and enormous technological and economic efforts to materialize.

Time Dilation and the Isolation of Interstellar Voyagers

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