How many minutes does it take light from the sun to reach the Earth? (Distance from the sun to Earth is 93 million miles; speed of light is 3.00 x 10^8 m/s)
2006-12-10 09:33:33 · 4 answers · asked by Robyn & L 1 in Science & Mathematics ➔ Astronomy & Space
How do you calculate it?
2006-12-10 09:43:18 · update #1
Its not too hard to do first you know the speed of light is 3 x 10^8 m/s so there are 1609 meters in one mile. In one second its travels 300 000 000 or three hundred million meters. Divide by the number of meters in a mile so
300 000 000 divided by 1609= 186451.212 milies in one second.
so 93 000 000(miles from the sun) divided by 186451.212(milies in one sec) = 498.79 seconds Divide by 60 now to get minutes
to get 8.31 minutes
2006-12-10 09:48:23 · answer #1 · answered by gordon_benbow 4 · 0⤊ 0⤋
8 minutes 32 seconds
2006-12-10 09:36:06 · answer #2 · answered by Whoosher 5 · 1⤊ 0⤋
about 8 minutes
2006-12-10 09:42:47 · answer #3 · answered by AlwaysWondering 5 · 0⤊ 0⤋
Well, this depends on your frame of reference. According to special relativity, length in the direction of travel when going at the speed of light contracts, at the speed of light length contracts to zero. So, from the point of view of the light, it gets here almost instantaneously some finite time is spent at less than the speed of light in the sun and earth atmospheres). However, also special relativity time slows down as you approach the speed of light, so the amount of time that goes by for us here waiting for the light passes much more quickly than time for the light, in fact about 8.5 minutes goes by here on earth, while for the light itself only a fraction of a second seems to have gone by.
But since we can not yet travel close to the speed of light, we more commonly just say that (from our experience) light takes about 8.5 minutes to get here.
2006-12-10 09:53:25 · answer #4 · answered by ZeedoT 3 · 0⤊ 1⤋