K2–18b: How Could We Visit It?
With the discovery of water vapour on planet K2-18b this raises the fascinating question of “is there life?” and “how could we visit it?”.
K2–18b is one of the first Exoplanets discovered that is both of a comparable size to Earth (about twice the size), lies at the correct orbital distance from its start that water can be in liquid form. Therefore, it carries the tantalising possibility that it could support life and therefore the desire that one day we may visit it for ourselves.
There is just one problem. K2–18b lies approximately 111 light years away.
How Far is That?
While I was working as an Astronomer I was looking at not the stars within our own galaxy (the Milky Way), but at galaxies outside it. Those distances are simply vast. So, in comparison 111 light years would seem so tiny on the scale of the Universe, but in reality, it is huge.
One light year is defined as the distance a photon (a sub-atomic light particle) can travel in one year, which is 9.46 trillion kilometres. Multiplying this by 111 light years we get a distance of:
104,942,227,205,520,000 km to K2–18b
To reduce the amount of carpel tunnel astronomers would get from constantly writing that many zeros we tend to put distances in…
