LONG-RANGE PLAN

Another Earth, just twelve light years away,

was found in our space telescopes today!

Though what it looks like we can’t really say,

we’re pretty sure that liquid water may

exist upon its surface anyway.

We can infer water’s liquidity

due to its “Goldilocks” vicinity

discerned through Einstein’s relativity,

duration of periodicity

and spectroscopic reflectivity.

And so, we must start making plans to go

to get there in a million years or so.

It took nearly an hour and a half for the light from this tiny planet (Earth, designated by arrow) to reach the rings of Saturn. Radio signals also require a minimum of eighty four minutes to span the 1.2 billion mile distance. The Voyager spacecraft took years to cross this distance which is still just a fraction of the more than 35,000 light hour trip just to reach the star nearest our Sun. (35,000 light hours is approximately four light years or 54,400 years, racing non-stop, at the top speed we’ve been able to produce so far.)