2006-07-03 11:39:27 · 22 answers · asked by kmc1169 2 in Science & Mathematics ➔ Astronomy & Space
If you guys were au fait with the metric system, the calculation is a piece of cake:
In round figures:
Sun 150,000,000 kms away
Light travels 300,000 km/sec
so: time in secs = 1.5 x 10^8 divided by 3 x 10^5
= 5 * 10^2
(or if you are not into using powers of 10, just divide 150,000,000 by 300,000, which comes down to 1500 divided by 3)
which of course is 500 seconds
Indicentally, to put things in perspective, light takes the following to travel from various places:
moon: 1.5 seconds
neptune: 4 hours
nearest star: 4.3 years
Farthest naked eye stars - about 1000 years
Other side of Milky Way - 80,000 years
Andromeda Galaxy (furthest thing visible to naked eye) - 2.5 million years
Farthest galaxies - +10 billion years
2006-07-03 11:53:57 · answer #1 · answered by nick s 6 · 1⤊ 0⤋
All you need to know for this is (a) the distance between the Earth and the Sun, and (b) the speed of light.
The Earth moves in an ellipse, so sometimes it is closer to the Sun than at other times. Its average distance is 92,958,807.23 miles
The speed of light in a vaccum is 186,282.397 miles per second.
Dividing the distance by the speed gives a time of 8 minutes and 19 seconds.
This means that when you see the sun rise, it actually did so 8 minutes and 19 seconds ago, but the light emitted by the sun at that time has only just reached you.
Put another way, the sun is 8.32 light-minutes away, whereas the nearest stars outside our solar system are over 4 light-years away.
2006-07-03 12:09:12 · answer #2 · answered by Questor 4 · 0⤊ 0⤋
It takes 8.3 minutes for the sun's light to reach Earth. The speed of light is 186,000 miles per second and the average distance to the Sun is 93 million miles.
2006-07-03 13:02:12 · answer #3 · answered by Anonymous · 0⤊ 0⤋
About 8 minutes
2006-07-03 11:42:15 · answer #4 · answered by christigmc 5 · 0⤊ 0⤋
The Earth occupies an elliptical orbit around the sun, so the answer varies a tiny bit depending on whether we are at the apogee (the farthest
away) or the perigee (nearest); the median answer in 8 and a half minutes.
2006-07-03 13:21:07 · answer #5 · answered by Anonymous · 0⤊ 0⤋
"The sun's light takes about 8 minutes to reach the Earth after it has been emitted from the sun's surface."
2006-07-03 11:43:22 · answer #6 · answered by love2travel 7 · 0⤊ 0⤋
8 minutes
2006-07-03 16:06:18 · answer #7 · answered by Joshuar 2 · 0⤊ 0⤋
8 minutes
2006-07-03 11:58:20 · answer #8 · answered by Anonymous · 0⤊ 0⤋
8 minutes
2006-07-03 11:43:09 · answer #9 · answered by Anonymous · 0⤊ 0⤋
Light travels 186,212 miles per second. It takes 8.3 min to reach Earth.
2006-07-03 11:44:56 · answer #10 · answered by ajwhite 2 · 0⤊ 0⤋