Conveniently, following my last posting, recent data was published confirming the distance to the Pleiades star cluster. Many are familiar with this cluster of bright stars as the Seven Sisters in the constellation of Taurus the Bull. This star system was measured to 136.2 parsecs away by very long baseline radio interferometry (VLBI). Not that that means much to any of us. The important part is the distance.
The Pleiades is one of the closest star clusters. But what is 136.2 parsecs? In more familiar units, this is 444.22 light-years away. Meaning that traveling at the speed of light (300,000 km/s) it would take 444 years to reach the Pleiades. Conversely, the light we see now from the Pleiades left those stars in 1570 to just now arrive.
But, let's think of this in more down-to-earth terms. Assuming that you could drive non-stop at 80 miles/hour, it would take 3,721,765,913.75 years to reach the Pleiades. That's 3.7 BILLION years. And those stars are close.
So, if we are alone, it's an awful waste of space. But that also means that unless we (or other sentient aliens) develop faster than light travel, it's going to be a long time until we meet anyone from those stars.
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This is a personal blog. The views expressed herein may not represent those of my employer.
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