47 comments. Interstellar travel is the hypothetical travel by interstellar probes between stars or planetary systems in a galaxy. Sunlight takes about 8 minutes to reach our eyes, so the sun is about 8 light-minutes away. 6 trillion miles. Here's how it breaks down: One light-year—the distance light travels in one year, used as the yardstick for interstellar distances—is about 5.9 trillion miles. Assuming for the sake of the argument that the stick is made of a totally plausible weightless but solid material. I read an article stating a spacecraft traveling 38000 miles an hour would take approximately 80,000 years to travel 1 light year. A light year is approx. For starters, a light-year is defined as the distance that a light can travel in one year (kind of obvious, maybe). A light year is the distance light will travel in a vacuum over the period of one (earth) year. On Earth, 2002 years would have passed. 1 light-year = 63240 AU (astronomical units) 63 240 / 3.9 = 16,215.3846 New Horizons would take 16,215 years just to go one light Year. So, we take these two very large numbers and multiply them together to see how many miles light can travel in one year. Is it instantaneous? 1 light year = 5.87849981 × 10^12 miles. So 10 light years is around 58.79 trillion miles (94.61 trillion km). If this is accurate, it will take 3,200,000 years to reach one of those planets. Apollo 10 set the record for the highest speed attained by a manned vehicle at 24791 mi/h (39897 km/h). how fast am i going? To figure out how long it would take to travel one light year is simply mulitply! Then you can use this calculator to work out how long it will take you, how much energy your spacecraft needs and what your maximum velocity will be. At 60 miles per hour it would take you 60 years! You can tell already that this is going to be huge! Space Exploration. A few examples of distances for light to travel are: Reflected sunlight from the Moon's surface takes 1.3 seconds to travel the 4.04 × 10-8 light years to Earth. The light-year is a unit of length used to express astronomical distances and is equivalent to about 9.46 trillion kilometres (9.46 × 10 12 km) or 5.88 trillion miles (5.88 × 10 12 mi). Then you multiply that by 24 hours in … A light year is a measure of distance. How far can light travel in the year in a vacuum? This video helps to understand how far a light year is by looking at things like light seconds and light minutes. It would take 441 years to travel one light year, which would place us about one third of the way to the nearest star. A light year is the distance light can travel in one year in a vacuum. At 99.9999% of the speed of light, the astronauts would take just over 2000 years to travel 2000 light years and would age 2.82 years while Earth's inhabitants watched 2000 years pass by. And I know it will take me 50 years to get there. An earth year is a unit of time. The light-year is a measure of distance, not time. Then you multiply that by 3,600 seconds in an hour. A light year can also be described as an astronomical unit of measuring astronomical distances in space At 200,000 mph it would take roughly 3355 years to travel 1 light year. New Horizons is covering about 3.9 AU's per year. Therefore a light year is exactly 9,460,730,472,580.8 kilometers. The longest highway in America is U.S. Route 20, which is 3,365 miles in length. A light-year is a measurement of distance and not time (as the name might suggest). To obtain an idea of the size of a light-year, take the circumference of the earth (24,900 miles), lay it out in a straight line, multiply the length of the line by 7.5 (the corresponding distance is one light-second), then place 31.6 million similar lines end to end. In one of the NASA Space Shuttles, about 76,526 earth years (38,263 earth years one way). There are 60 secs. Since light moves at about 186,000 miles or about 300,000 kilometers a second, it can travel almost 6 trillion miles or about 10 trillion kilometers in a year. You raise a good point about where the solar system ends, some would agree with your estimate. So, at the fastest speed yet achieved, we would travel 13140000000 miles in a year. distance traveled by a light in a vacuum within a Julian year (365.25 days.) How long does a light year take for the light travelling it? So, this trip would take 1.2 billion hours. It travels at the speed of light! ... to travel over that 1 lightyear distance? Light travels 671 million miles per hour (about 1 billion km/h). in a min, 60 mins in an hour, 24 hours in a day, and 365 days in a year. If you were traveling at exactly the speed of light, it would take exactly ten years. A light year is the distance that light travels in one year. Light takes 1 year to travel a distance of 1 light-year. As defined by the International Astronomical Union (IAU), a light-year is the distance that light travels in vacuum in one Julian year (365.25 days). Well, it depends how fast you're going. How Long is a Light-Year? Of course it depends on how fast the object is traveling. 88. A light-year is the distance that light travels in one year. The year used by the International Astronomical Union is 365.25 days. This is approximately 5.879 trillion miles (9.461 trillion km). There are 6 trillion miles in a light-year (approximately), so the distance we need to go is 6 trillion miles / light-year times 4 light-years, or 24 trillion miles. Since light travels at about 186,300 miles per second, with 86,400 seconds per day and about 365 days per year, that works out at about: 186300xx86400xx365 ~~ 5,875,000,000,000 miles. The length of time light from other stars needs to travel to reach the Earth varies greatly. Light takes 230 million years to travel a distance of 230 million light-years. share. If the distance in space i want to travel is 1 light year. That's a … While it takes light from the sun just over eight minutes to reach Earth, light from the farthest known galaxy has to travel for 13.3 billion years. If you travel close to the speed of light, you can also see how much time it will take from your point of view and from the point of view of the people on earth. The variables used will be 1. xfor the distance travelled 2. vfor velocity 3. a for acceleration (1g) 4. tfor the time 5. cfor the speed of light. That number is 5,865,696,000,000. It is the total distance that a beam of light, moving in a straight line, travels in one year. You start with the speed of light, which is about 186,000 miles per second. Okay hypothetically. How long would it take for you to say, do a road trip equivalent to one light-year? 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