So 10 light years is around 58.79 trillion miles (94.61 trillion km). So, we take these two very large numbers and multiply them together to see how many miles light can travel in one year. In one of the NASA Space Shuttles, about 76,526 earth years (38,263 earth years one way). At 60 miles per hour it would take you 60 years! 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. share. You start with the speed of light, which is about 186,000 miles per second. 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. Therefore a light year is exactly 9,460,730,472,580.8 kilometers. A light year is a measure of distance. 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. The year used by the International Astronomical Union is 365.25 days. So, at the fastest speed yet achieved, we would travel 13140000000 miles in a year. This video helps to understand how far a light year is by looking at things like light seconds and light minutes. Light travels 671 million miles per hour (about 1 billion km/h). And I know it will take me 50 years to get there. How long does a light year take for the light travelling it? It is the total distance that a beam of light, moving in a straight line, travels in one year. 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 longest highway in America is U.S. Route 20, which is 3,365 miles in length. You raise a good point about where the solar system ends, some would agree with your estimate. How Long is a Light-Year? 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. A light year can also be described as an astronomical unit of measuring astronomical distances in space Space Exploration. How far can light travel in the year in a vacuum? 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. A light year is approx. I read an article stating a spacecraft traveling 38000 miles an hour would take approximately 80,000 years to travel 1 light year. 6 trillion miles. Then you multiply that by 3,600 seconds in an hour. You can tell already that this is going to be huge! in a min, 60 mins in an hour, 24 hours in a day, and 365 days in a year. If this is accurate, it will take 3,200,000 years to reach one of those planets. Is it instantaneous? A light year is the distance that light travels in one year. Then you multiply that by 24 hours in … 47 comments. Sunlight takes about 8 minutes to reach our eyes, so the sun is about 8 light-minutes away. A light year is the distance light can travel in one year in a vacuum. 88. 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). 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. Interstellar travel is the hypothetical travel by interstellar probes between stars or planetary systems in a galaxy. The travelers on the spaceship will have aged 89.51 years during their 2002.002 years of flight. ... to travel over that 1 lightyear distance? The light-year is a measure of distance, not time. 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. 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). That number is 5,865,696,000,000. New Horizons is covering about 3.9 AU's per year. At 200,000 mph it would take roughly 3355 years to travel 1 light year. To figure out how long it would take to travel one light year is simply mulitply! A light year is the distance light will travel in a vacuum over the period of one (earth) year. 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. How long would it take for you to say, do a road trip equivalent to one light-year? Well, it depends how fast you're going. If you were traveling at exactly the speed of light, it would take exactly ten years. The length of time light from other stars needs to travel to reach the Earth varies greatly. Apollo 10 set the record for the highest speed attained by a manned vehicle at 24791 mi/h (39897 km/h). So, this trip would take 1.2 billion hours. 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. That's a … It travels at the speed of light! It would take 441 years to travel one light year, which would place us about one third of the way to the nearest star. Light takes 230 million years to travel a distance of 230 million light-years. If the distance in space i want to travel is 1 light year. Assuming for the sake of the argument that the stick is made of a totally plausible weightless but solid material. Of course it depends on how fast the object is traveling. This is approximately 5.879 trillion miles (9.461 trillion km). A light-year is a measurement of distance and not time (as the name might suggest). 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. There are 60 secs. An earth year is a unit of time. 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. 1 light year = 5.87849981 × 10^12 miles. There are 24 hours a day and 365.25 days per year, so this time in years is 137 thousand years. Okay hypothetically. distance traveled by a light in a vacuum within a Julian year (365.25 days.) A light-year is the distance that light travels in one year. 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