The furthest stars must be millions of miles?

Question

They must be, i mean how big is this universe, probably billions of miles.

Answer 1

You are far short of the mark.

The Outer planet, Neptune, is 3 billion miles from the sun.

The very nearest star is over 8,000 times as far away. That is 24 trillion miles. Repeat: that is the nearest star.

That is why they use light years to measure.

But it is not use people answering you in light years. You wanted miles.

Our galaxy is 100,000 light years across - that is about

600,000,000,000,000,000 miles or 600 quadrillion miles.

The Milky Way galaxy contains over 100 billion stars, all suns like our own.

But there are billions of galaxies, extending out to more miles than I could get on a line in the box I am typing in.

Answer 2

My friend, the farthest stars from the Earth aren't even within the realm of the observable universe (a 26 billion light year bubble) and the fact that the universe is alwasy expanding makes that distance increase very second of our lives. Consider this: scientists use light years, or the distance light travels in one year (light travels at 186,000 km/sec), to calculate that distance. Our closest stellar neighbor is Proxima Centauri which is 4 light years away. The Milky Way is 100,000 light years wide. So, do the math and take that into account.

Answer 3

Man, the *observable* universe is a 26 billion light-year wide bubble, and if the "Inflation Theory" is correct the observable part compared to the whole universe might be like an atom compared to the whole earth. Pretty wacky stuff, but yeah that's millions of miles -- LOTS and LOTS of millions of miles.

Answer 4

the truth is the universe has no end it is allways and forever everywhere and just because we cant see it doesnt mean its not there.millions of miles mean nothing in terms of billions of billions of light years with each light year being over 286,000,000 million miles long the sum of what we call the known universe is so insignificant to the universe as a whole.that it can only be poorly discribed as a single thought in the entire lives of everything that has ever lived any where at any time.

Answer 5

The Sun is 93 million miles away and The NEAREST other star is 25 TRILLION miles away. The farthest stars are so far away that miles are just way too small, so they use light years to measure those distances.

Answer 6

Yes they are. The nearest star to us is called Proxima Centauri, the main star in the constellation of Centaur. It is approximately 4.26 light years away. This is the distance that light travels in that time. Light moves at about 300.000 kilometers per second (1 kilometer is equal to about 0.6 of a mile, so light travels about 180.000 miles per second). So Proxima Centauri is over 40 trillion kilometers away from Earth! (which in miles is over 24 trillion miles!)
The universe is really big, astronomers have discovered galaxies billion of light years away from Earth!

Answer 7

Much more than that. The FARTHEST stars are millions of LIGHT YEARS away. A light year is the distance that light crosses in an entire year. Light travels at 186,000 miles PER SECOND, so you can imagine how far that is.

Answer 8

consider this: the closest star to our sun is 4.2 light years away.

take out your calculator..

speed of light is 186,282.397 miles per second, or 670,616,629.384 miles per hour.

Multiply this number by 24.
Then multiply this number by 365.
Finish by multiplying that number by 4.2.

The closest star to our sun, Proxima Centauri, is only

24,673,327,028,296.128 miles away!

that is 24 trillion miles away.

the distance can be put in prespective this way: it is circumnavigating the Earth 800 million times.

Now, if your talking about the furthest stars, which are millions of light years away... the numbers become incomprehensible.

Answer 9

That's not even the half of it. Current estimates are that the Universe is 156 billion light-years wide. Each light-year is 5.9 × 10^12 miles.

Billions doesn't even come close...trillions of billions more like.

Answer 10

The farthest stars from the sun are billions of light-years away. I think the farthest galaxy is 14 billion light-years away, so the suns are the same.