Dear Merlin,
I think you just might be the one to explain something that has always puzzled me. I did some research first to get to my question. Ok, here goes!

Light travels at 186,282 miles per second. One light year (how many miles light can travel in one year) is 5,865,696,000,000. The Milky Way is 100,000 light years in diameter.

Now, to be able to go across the Milky Way without spending 100,000 light years, assuming we can travel at the speed of light, we would have to travel in a way that would cut down on the time in order to get there before we died.

I know about the wormhole theories (well, I don't "know", I've heard, and also about "bending" space to get somewhere really quick--don't understand that either but oh well), but how come time speeds up when we travel in space and we get back to our starting point years later than the time it took us to travel there and back in the first place? (but I think I see what you mean about "we" don't speed up, time still moves at the same rate?)

I may be just showing how stupid I am, but I'd really like to know this! Oh well. Guess I'd better stick to my simple job, my detective shows, trying to handle mania, and placing ads on eBay.

(BTW, a thought takes 550-750 milliseconds) And somebody else can do the math for that. That's it for me, my brain is FRIED)...who started this topic anyway?!