What is the speed of light???

Question

What is the speed of light? What is a light year? How far from pluto are we? And at the current speed that we are able to travel how long would it take us to get to Pluto?

Answer 1

The speed of light is about 186,282.397 miles per second, that is about one foot per nanosecond

299,792,458 metres per second metric

The distance from Earth to Pluto is not constant, but averages to 3.57 billion miles. The Space Shuttle orbits at 17,500 miles per hour. Therefore 205,000 hours or 8,500 days or 23 years 105 days.

Answer 2

The above answers apply to the speed of light in a vacuum only. It will be slower in other materials. Our distance from Pluto varies greatly, and depends on the position of earth in htits orbit (time of year) and position of pluto in its orbit. Pluto's orbit is more eccentric than earth's, and is not in the same plane as the other planets. A maximum is about 7.5*10^9 km
and a minimum is 4.2*10^9 km. The highest rocket speed attained so far is approx 40*10^3 km/hr (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orders_of_magnitude_%28speed%29 .) The shortest time at that speed would be 12 years and the longest about 21 years. However, that assumes a direct flight which is not likely, so actual times could be much longer.

Answer 3

The answers given of approximately 3x10^8 meters per second is the speed of light in a vacum. Traveling through space that's about right and since your asking in Astronomy & Space, it's probably the answer your after.

It is however affected by the medium, in a fiber optic cable, for example, you often use 2x10^8 mps as the speed of light through the material used to make the cable (different types vary).

Light year - distance light travels in a year there are 31,557,600 seconds in a year, let's call that 3.1x10^7 so a light year is about 9.3x10^15 meters

The distance to Pluto varies as it and Earth orbit the Sun. One of the Voyager craft passed near Pluto as it left the solar system. It wasn't flying 'fast' but for efficiency...took almost 30 years I think.

Hit NASA and lookup Voyager I and Voyager II, based on the questions your asking, you'll love all the data they can provide.

Answer 4

stable sufficient. Time does not pass slower for speedy gadgets. it looks to you, assuming you would be table certain, that ingredient is passing slower for speedy gadgets. If there are no accelerations reward - each and everything is consistently shifting on the equivalent speeds relative to a minimum of one yet another - then there is not any thank you to tell who's moving and who's at rest. Now the twin paradox, which you form of paraphrased here, has 3 accelerations in it. you start up from entertainment and accomplish an fairly extreme velocity. After a time, you turn around this suggests which you slow down, you momentarily end, and you velocity as much as a extreme velocity lower back. hence you attain earth and slow to a stop. At each and every acceleration, you journey a tension which the earthbound guy or woman would not so that's sparkling who's in circulate and who's at rest. consequently, you are going to return after 10 years it sluggish maximum useful to seek for out that a lots longer time has handed in the international. Now famous person trek assumes there is a thank you to journey exterior of the 4 dimensional area that defines the universe - the so-everyday as subspace. in this subspace, relativity would not stick to - that's exterior the universe surprisingly lots - so which you will desire to pass from ingredient to ingredient in a finite quantity of time and, the time it takes to traverse the hollow as measured by the starship's clock may be the time that elapses in the universe - form of not likely even although imperative while you're writting one hour long television episodes. there is not any data for the form of trip use in sought after guy or woman trek.

Answer 5

The speed of light in a vacuum = 299,792,458 meters per second. This is not a measurement it is a standard from which all metric measurements are taken.

According to Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Speed_of_light
"The speed of light in a vacuum is an important physical constant denoted by the letter c for constant or the Latin word celeritas meaning "swiftness".[1] It is the speed of all electromagnetic radiation in a vacuum, including visible light, and more generally it is the speed of anything with zero rest mass.

In metric units, c is exactly 299,792,458 meters per second (1,079,252,848.8 km/h) but 3×108 m/s is commonly used in rough estimates. Note that this speed is a definition, not a measurement."

A light year is the distance that it takes a beam of light to travel in one year. So 1 light year = 9,460,730,472,580,800 meters. [299,792,458 meters/second X 365.25 days per year X 24 hours per day X 60 minutes per hour x 60 seconds per minute. or 9.4 kilometers].

This is a huge distance and it is almost impossible to think of. The nearest star is Alpha Centauri.

According to Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alpha_Centauri
"Alpha Centauri is the closest star system to our own solar system at 4.37 light-years distant (about 41.5 trillion km, 25.8 trillion miles or 277,600 AU)."

An AU = Astronomical Unit and is the average distance between the Sun and Earth. It is equal to about 8 light minutes. Which means it takes about 8 minutes for light to travel from the sun to the Earth.

According to Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Astronomical_Unit
“The astronomical unit (AU or au or a.u. or sometimes ua) is a unit of length nearly equal to the semi-major axis of Earth's orbit around the Sun. The currently accepted value of the AU is 149 597 870 691 ± 30 metres (about 150 million kilometres or 93 million miles).”

Pluto is about 39.48 AU so that means it is 38.48 AU from Earth, or about 3.5 billion miles.

For more on the planets and their distances from the sun or earth check out this Wikipedia Article: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planets

Going to Pluto depends on a lot of factors, how you do it, when you do it, and what orbit you take. If you chose the optimum conditions then you will chose a time when the orbits of Pluto and Earth have the planets at their closest, you will want the fastest spacecraft possible, and you will want to get additional speed by using gravitational assist from Jupiter or use an engine that is burning for the entire trip.

The New Horizons Spacecraft uses a revolutionary ion drive and is currently the fastest moving man made object. It is on course for Pluto (the mission was planned before Pluto was demoted). The mission’s flight time is expected to be 10 years. For more information check out this Wikipedia article: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Horizons

[There, I at least tried to answer ALL your questions.]

Answer 6

Speed of light = 299792458 m/s
1 Light year = 9.4605284x10^15 m
Difference in mean orbit radius of pluto and earth = 5.75678213x10^12 m
Fastest manned spacecraft speed (away from earth) = 11100 m/s
Time to pluto at that speed = 16.43 years

Answer 7

the speed of light is 3 x 10^10 meters/second in s.i. units or 186,000 mi/hr in british units. now the light year is this number multiplied by 365x24. to see how far we are from pluto see an astronomy book or table.

Answer 8

In metric units, c is exactly 299,792,458 metres per second (1,079,252,848.8 km/h) but 3×10^8 m/s is commonly used in rough estimates.....

A light year is a unit of measurement of length, specifically the distance light travels in a vacuum in one year.

Answer 9

Speed of light is 299792458 m/s

Answer 10

186,000 miles a second.