The Washington Post:
A newfound solar system just 39 light-years away contains seven warm, rocky planets, scientists say.
The newly discovered solar system resembles a scaled-down version of our own. The star at its center, an ultra-cool dwarf called TRAPPIST-1, is less than a tenth the size of our sun and about a quarter as warm. Its planets circle tightly around it; the closest takes just a day and a half to complete an orbit and the most distant takes about 20 days.
This is an amazing discovery and really cool science but when you hear the media describe it as a “nearby” star, note that’s in astronomical terms. Even though it’s “only” 39 light-years away, it will likely be at least a century before humans can even think about traveling to them.
Far more than a century. Frankly, unless we discover some trick to enable faster than light travel, we’ll never get there. Even if we could safely and instantly accelerate to, say, 20% of light speed that’s roughly 180 years. Each way.
WORMHOLES
I hope we get faster than that someday. But either way we’d hope to build floating colony ships that could make an incredibly long journey to another New Earth and become pioneers. Chopping wood, hunting animals, and basically starting anew. Doing so is how we diversify from a single point of failure; in the long run it doesn’t really matter how long it takes to get there.
But for fun, think how much faster today’s jets and travel are compared to ocean steamer’s and crude cars of a century ago.
The distances are nothing like interstellar distances though and building an ecosystem that could contain people and last for 50+ years (a near-lightspeed journey time to this star) is far beyond what we can do now.
This reminds me of a sci-fi story I read when I was a kid. (Maybe written by Heinlein?) A slow, primitive space probe is launched on a heroic multi-century flight to another star system. But by the time it’s halfway there, passenger liners full of tourists are zooming back and forth past it at faster-than-light speed. And nobody even notices the old probe. It would be like looking down out of a jet airliner to spot ancient covered wagons abandoned in the desert.
Sounds like “Orphans of the Sky.” The idea of a lost generation-ship full of people who’ve forgotten they’re on a ship is a bit of a staple of science fiction.