IF YOU hopped on a spaceship traveling at speed of light...?

Question

...how long will it take to arrive in Pluto (from Earth)? And how much time will have elapsed on Earth?

Thanks for the great answers. i still don't understand, however, why no time would pass in the spaceship?

Answer 1

For you, the trip would take no time. Of course there is a few problems with this. One, you can't actually go that fast. Two, if you "hopped on" you would get splattered against the back wall, because we can't accelerate that fast and live.

From Earth's point of view, it would depend on exactly where Pluto was in relation to the Earth. If we assumed that it was lined up with the Earth and the Sun, and it was 33 AU from the Sun (it ranges from 29 to 49) and the Earth was 1 AU (it also varies slightly) then it would take about 4.7 hours.

Answer 2

I know you are hypothetically speaking, light speed travel is impossible, but I will play along. Let's say from the Sun. It would be 5 hours and 20 minutes to reach Pluto from the Sun. From us? That would be easy, 5 hours and 20 minutes minus 8 minutes for light to reach us is 5 hours and 12 minutes to reach Pluto from Earth. Exactly 5 hours and 12 minutes would elapse on Earth, traveling at the speed of time doesn't affect time it's self. I hope that I helped you out!

Answer 3

The time it would take would vary, depending on where pluto was in relationship to the earth. Pluto has a wildly eliptical orbit, taking it from 4.3 and 7.2 billion kilometers from the sun, whereas earth's orbit is mostly circular, ranging from 146K kilometers to 152K kilometers.

Light travels at 299792.548 km/s, so if you left earth and pluto was 7.2 billion km away, it would take 24016.61 seconds, or 6 hours, 40 minutes. If pluto is at it's closest point to the sun, the trip will take only 4 hours, so planning the trip with an astrophysicist will help you save as much as 2 hrs, 40 minutes - not insignificant.

Earth's position relative to pluto accounts for a differential of 2 seconds, more or less.

Have a fun trip :D

Answer 4

It would take between about 10-30 minuets earth time to get to Pluto, depending on both our and Pluto's orbit, but less than a second for the traveler.

Answer 5

well, the question is similar to einstein's question where he asked "what do i see when i travel at the speed of light?"but there's a flaw in the question. You will never be able to travel at the speed of light, even if there's no external resistance to your movement. check the einstein's relativity theory. you will see that when your velocity approaches the speed of light, the power needed will approaches to infinity. So, you can say that (with available theory) we cannot travel at the speed of light.

even if we can, it should be a minutes or so (this is YOUR time). the calculation is simple. about the time elapsed on earth, you will have to (again) check with relativity theory, because according to einstein (still controversial), time will go slower when you travel farther from a large body mass, like the sun.

Answer 6

5.148 hours to Pluto. Straight line course with earth and Pluto in alignment with the sun. But to you, on the ship, no time would elapse at all.

Answer 7

One second to arrive at Pluto Inter stellar landing strip and no time will have elapsed on earth.

Answer 8

Well, we know that Pluto is 39 AU (astronomical units away from the sun = 1 AU = 93,000,000 = say 8 mins to earth) so lets say for sake of easiness that its

40
x8
320
/60
5.33

So its 5.333 hours to Pluto at light speed. How long would it take to you on the ship? No one knows. Period. However, it would NOT SEEM to take that long at all.

Answer 9

Perihelion 4,436,824,613 km
29.658 340 67 AU

Aphelion 7,375,927,931 km
49.305 032 87 AU

speed of light - 299,792,458 metres per second.

roughly 4 to 7 hours depending on where pluto was in its orbit

elapsed earth time I don't know.

Answer 10

a little longer than 8 minutes
probably sometime like 30 minutes
cuz from the sun to earth
it takes 8 minutes
or not
if pa28 is correct
and if i did math correctly
it will take us 289.81 days
OR
384.0427129 days

but you can always make a 360 around Jupiter to create that sling shot effect to make urself faster
then u can use Saturn
then Uranus, then, well, you can't use anything
and i don't htink u wanna use Uranus