Here is a video of the RAF response
http://vids.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=vids.individual&videoid=43588560
I once met a man named Zaphod Beebelbrox at a fashionable pub in Chelsea. He claimed he was from the Orion Nebula and was visiting Earth on holiday. Just popped in for a pint you see.
Given a few pints of Old Specked Hen I can see how some members of the RAF could come to some pretty strange conclusions.
I have often wondered who buys all this stuff at garage sales.
There’s only a handful of stars that are between 4 and 12 light years away from Earth, and none of them have inhabitable planets. So let’s say we want to visit a star 12 light years away:
At the speed of light it will take 12 years to get there. At twice the speed of light, 6 years. At four times the speed of light, 3 years. At eight times the speed of light, a year and a half. And at sixteen times the speed of light, nine months. At thirty-two times the speed of light, four and a half months. At sixty-four times the speed of light, nine weeks. At a hundred and twenty-eight times the speed of light, four and a half weeks.
At 256 times the speed of light, two weeks and two days. At 512 times the speed of light, eight days. At 1024 times the speed of light, four days. At 2048 times the speed of light, two days.
Finally, traveling at four thousand, ninety-six times the speed of light, we can get practically next door in space, in just a single day.
But right now, the closest possible star that might have a habitable planet, is a dwarf star 20 light-years from Earth called Gliese 581. And it probably doesn’t actually have life, but it is vaguely like Earth in some ways.
LOL.