How long would it take?

[afaber12]

 

 

Do you want our guesses to include the mucking about with slingshot maneuvers within our solar system, and accelerating up to that speed?

 

Do you want our guesses to exclude the time it took to get up to that speed, in which case also exclude the distance between Earth and an appropriate gas giant? If so, should we assume optimal positioning of Earth's and said gas giant's orbit in relation to Proxima Centauri?

 

I'd be shocked if including the acceleration time or the slingshot maneuver made a significant difference.

 

 

It wouldn't - afaber is just showing his inner geekdom.

 

 

There's not much that's "inner" about my geekdom!   

[blue23ll]

All I know is that it is impossible for a fastball to rise and for a pitcher to balk on a move to 2nd base.

[afaber12]

I think this question is of similar import, but perhaps more applicable to this forum: What would happen if you tried to hit a baseball pitched at 90% the speed of light?

 

http://what-if.xkcd.com/1/

 

I think the author's conclusion is incorrect, though a result perhaps of a common misconception. Irrespective of what the correct ruling would be, I doubt any of the participants would be in a position to argue the call, nor would the original umpiring crew be in a position to defend their call.

[grayhawk]

Okay, so the answer is approximately 18,970 years by my calculations.  That's using 186,282.4 miles per second as the speed of light, and 4.243 light years to Proxima Centauri.

 

To give some perspective on distance, if we were to use a scale model of the two solar systems (our own, and that of Proxima Centauri), if earth was a half inch from the sun, then Proxima Centauri would be 2.1 miles away!

[JaxRolo]

What is light year? Is there a dark year? Is it in the United States? We don't have one in Cuba