Intergalactic travel is space travel between galaxies. Due to the enormous distances between our own galaxy and even its closest neighbours, any such venture would be far more technologically demanding than even interstellar travel. While luxons (massless particles such as photons) would take approximately 2.54 million years to traverse the 2.54 million light-year wide gulf of space between Earth and Andromeda, it would take an arbitrarily short amount of time for a traveler at relativistic speed (due to the effects of time dilation; the time experienced by the traveler depends both on velocity, being anything less than the speed of light, and distance traveled (length contraction).

Intergalactic travel, as it pertains to humans, is impractical by modern engineering ability and is considered highly speculative. It would require the available means of propulsion to become advanced far beyond what is currently thought possible to engineer in order to bring a large craft close to the speed of light. Unless the craft were capable of reaching extreme relativistic speeds, another obstacle would be to navigate the spacecraft between galaxies and succeed in reaching any chosen galaxy, star, planet or other body, as this would need an understanding of galactic movements and their coordination that is as of yet not understood. The craft would have to be of considerable size, without reaching speeds with noteworthy relativistic effect as mentioned above it would also need a life support system and structural design able to support human life through thousands of generations and last the millions of years required, including the propulsion system -- which would have to work perfectly the millions of years after it was built to slow down the machine for its final approach. Even for unmanned probes which would be much lighter in mass, the problem exists that the information they send can only travel at light speed, which would mean millions of years just to receive the data they send.

Current physics states that an object within space-time cannot exceed the speed of light, which seemingly limits any object to the millions of years it would at best take for a craft traveling near the speed of light to reach any remote galaxy. Science fiction frequently employs speculative concepts such as wormholes and hyperspace as more practical means of intergalactic travel to work around this issue. However, some scientists are optimistic in regard to future research into techniques considered even in concept sheer science fiction in the past.

From Wikipedia under the GNU Free Documentation License
Wed Jul 21 07:30:03 2010

What are the steps for our civilization to become more advanced?
Q. Like, how do we get to intergalactic travel? Time travel? Use our minds to communicate? Can somebody explain some of the progression that would be needed to get from here to there? I know it is not impossible, but cannot understand how, say over the next 10,000 years, humans may develop things like teleportation and stuff like that.
Asked by felicia_s - Wed Mar 29 00:04:52 2006 - - 3 Answers - 0 Comments

A. The answer is quite simple: More people like you must be born. Now something more practical... we need to look at the quantum world. We must discover how consciousness works, and then we will be able to travel instantly anywhere within this universe or other universes. It is known scientifically that two atomic particles "communicate" with each other, and one "knows" what the other is doing (even at great distances). This is the key and not some engine or fuel. It is accepted that matter/energy cannot travel faster than light, however consciousness is neither. Maybe more later must go now.
Answered by Aquila - Wed Mar 29 00:19:04 2006

Thought game; Would an extraterrestrial life form have a higher chance of being benevolent?
Q. In many science fiction space operas, there are usually many different types of intergalactic space faring creatures. What I wonder is if it would be more likely that a race that has reached the level of technology required for intergalactic travel would be benevolent amongst their own and perhaps even towards other creatures? More or less does the simple fact that they are able to achieve that level of technology mean that they are more likely to be "good"? This thought struck me last night when I was watching a program on cuttlefish. A researcher was curious if the tiny flamboyant cuttlefish was actually poisonous. I wondered to myself if he was going to just catch one that was alive and kill it to research it, but instead the… [cont.]
Asked by James - Thu Jul 23 09:07:52 2009 - - 1 Answers - 0 Comments

A. I think you are correct. In nature there's always a balance. Humans for instance, are very smart, but we are pathetically weak and slow. In order to be smart enough to devise a method for interstellar travel it just makes sense evolutionarily that you'd have to sacrifice muscle power. And if you're one of the weakest species on your planet you'd have to develop a sense of altruism in order to survive. There are countless animals that could kick our ass 1 on 1 but the reason we're the dominant species is because we learned to work together. That's what enabled our ancestors to focus development on the brain without risking the loss of our feeble bodies. So if we ever run into another intelligent life form, I think chances are they'll be… [cont.]
Answered by Duke O - Thu Jul 23 11:41:58 2009

Would an advanced extraterrestrial life form have a higher chance of being benevolent?
Q. In many science fiction space operas, there are usually many different types of intergalactic space faring creatures. What I wonder is if it would be more likely that a race that has reached the level of technology required for intergalactic travel would be benevolent amongst their own and perhaps even towards other creatures? More or less does the simple fact that they are able to achieve that level of technology mean that they are more likely to be "good"? This thought struck me last night when I was watching a program on cuttlefish. A researcher was curious if the tiny flamboyant cuttlefish was actually poisonous. I wondered to myself if he was going to just catch one that was alive and kill it to research it, but instead the… [cont.]
Asked by James - Thu Jul 23 20:38:36 2009 - - 4 Answers - 0 Comments

A. The origin of kindness and benevolence, or maybe altruism if you prefer, is well dealt with by Richard Dawkins in "The Selfish Gene." In the book, part of what he argues is that organisms are most altruistic towards those most closely related to them because they are most likely to share the same genes. Therefore, we may be more altruistic to a brother than towards a stranger. Humans are also generally not altruistic to other species. We eat them. Now, we generally do not eat those animals who we recognize to be near a similar level to humans (dolphins, apes, etc.). But they don't have voting rights. What I'm getting around to saying is that any alien species well developed enough to have intergalactic travel may regard us as we… [cont.]
Answered by eytex - Thu Jul 23 21:30:42 2009

From Yahoo Answer Search: "Intergalactic travel"
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