Have you ever wondered how far away the nearest star is? Alpha Centari is approximately 4.3 light-years away. One light-second is 186,000 miles, so a light-year is 31,536,000 seconds * 186,000 miles, or 5,865,696,000,000 miles.

Wow. A light-year is approximately 6 trillion miles. So Alpha Centari is about 25 trillion miles away. If I took an airplane that flew at 550 mph, it would take me 25 trillion/550 = 45,859,077,818 hours or about 5.2 million years to fly there on a Boeing 747.

Hmmmmm... not counting all the peanuts and magazines I'd need to keep myself preoccupied.

Lets hope scientists can come up with something faster.