Part 4/12:
While popular fiction depicts vast galactic empires, it rarely addresses the idea of colonizing neighboring galaxies even when it is theory-wise feasible. With ships capable of traversing an entire galaxy—such as our own Milky Way—in a year, extending that voyage to neighboring galaxies, like Andromeda, should not present insurmountable problems. In fact, given the relative proximity of the Andromeda Galaxy at around 2.5 million light years—about twenty times the width of our own galaxy—intergalactic travel could be within our grasp.