Could humans ever travel to other galaxies within their lifetime? The immense scale of the Universe seems to prohibit such voyages, after all the nearest galaxy is so far away that it takes light itself - the fastest thing in the Universe - 2.5 million years to complete the trip. Remarkably, there is a trick that might allow humans to accomplish this feat - join us today as we step onboard the constantly accelerating spaceship! Written and presented by Professor David Kipping. You can now support our research program and the Cool Worlds Lab at Columbia University: https://www.coolworldslab.com/support Chapters 0:00 - Prologue 2:57 - A Journey to Alpha Centauri 11:27 - Returning from Distant Shores 21:12 - Onward to the End Further reading and resources: ► Lee, J. & Cleaver, G., 2015, "The Relativistic Blackbody Spectrum in Inertial and Non-Inertial Reference Frames": https://arxiv.org/abs/1507.06663 ► Yurtsever, U. & Wilkinson, S. 2015, "Limits and Signatures of Relativistic Flight": https://arxiv.org/abs/1503.05845v3 ► Margalef-Bentabol, B., Margalef-Bentabol, J., Cepa, J., 2013, "Evolution of the Cosmological Horizons in a Concordance Universe": https://arxiv.org/abs/1302.1609 ► Columbia University Department of Astronomy: http://www.astro.columbia.edu ► Cool Worlds Lab website: http://coolworlds.astro.columbia.edu Music is largely by Chris Zabriskie (http://chriszabriskie.com/) and is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), in order of appearance; ► Cylinder Five (http://chriszabriskie.com/cylinders/) ► Music from Neptune Flux, "The Oceans Continue to Rise http://chriszabriskie.com/neptuneflux/ ► Music from Neptune Flux, "We Were Never Meant to Live Here" http://chriszabriskie.com/neptuneflux/ ► Cylinder Two (http://chriszabriskie.com/cylinders/) ► Cylinder Four (http://chriszabriskie.com/cylinders/) ► Cylinder Eight (http://chriszabriskie.com/cylinders/) ► "It's Always