travelling at the speed of light how long would it take to get to pluto?

Answer 1

From Earth to Pluto: about 4 hours, 13 minutes. That's for today, July 23. Other times of the year take a bit more or less.

Answer 2

To the person travelling at the speed of light (since this is impossible, make that 99.999999 percent the speed of light or add however many 9's you want) and assuming that accelerating to this speed takes a negligible amount of time (of course the acceleration would kill you, but this is a hypothetical question), and that the stopping time can alo be ignored, then ZERO time. To a photon of light crossing the entire universe takes no time. Remember relativity and time dilation and that stuff about moving clocks running slow. At the speed of light you could travel anywhere and no time would pass for you. Of course to everyone on earth a lot of time could pass.
You can do a more precise calculation by taking some accleration, say 10G, that a human can withstand and find how long it would take to reach the speed of light since V=A*T. The stopping time would be the same. The period of time when you are at the speed of light or very close to it you can take to be 0. So the total travel time would be 2*T. Now this is just for fun so no worry about the spaceship and fuel and this sort of stuff, just assume that the spaceship can be built to do this. Of course the practical limits are that mass increases as speed increases so more and more energy is needed to increase your speed the faster you go. This of course results in the fact that you will never reach the speed of light. But you can come as close to it as you want. To be more exact your time would be dilated so:
TL = D/V where TL=time of travel at your speed V to someone watching you from earth, D is the distance travelled at this speed and this would be DP-2*V*T where DP is the total distance you travel from earth to pluto and 2*V*T is the distance you need to accelerate and decellarate. Now your time would be
TT=TL*SQRT(1-V**2/C**2). so
Travel time = 2*T + TT = 2*(V/A) + (D/V)*(1-V**2/C**2)
C=speed of light (3x10**8 meters/second)
V=the final velocity you want to reach
D=distance you travel (earth to pluto)
A=acceleration rate of your spaceship (say 10G or about 100m/s)

This is very simplified but should give a ball park sort of number. Actually you might not have enough room between earth and pluto to do the acceleration, etc. At 10G this time would be over a month. At 100G this would be down around 3 and a half days (3*10**5 seconds). But light only takes about 5.4 hours on average so you would need even higher accelerations and these would probably have a pretty bad effect on the person on the spaceship. So you might do another calculation: at the maximum acceleration a person can take, how long would it take to reach pluto.
V=A*T
T=(D/2)/V = (D/2)/(A*T) and T**2 = D/(2*A)
Travel time is then 2*T
T=time to accelerate and then slow down
D/2= half the travel distance (the distance for accelerating and for stopping-making the trip symetrical)

Now take the distance at 6 billion km (somewhere in between min and max distance from earth) and set A to 10G.
T=SQRT(D/(2*A)) = 5477 seconds

so it would take you about 11000 seconds or about 7.6 hours to reach pluto. Not too bad. Of course this is the time a clock on the earth would read, your actual time would be less than this since you are moving.

Answer 3

From the sun to Pluto at its farthest distance would be 6.79 hours. From the sun to Pluto at its closest would be 4.1 hours.
You could have worked this out yourself - you just need to know the speed of light and the distance of Pluto from the sun. Then you just do a little math.

Answer 4

Remember, when considering travel times between two planets, the destination planet could be on the far side of the Sun to planet of origin. Then you have to allow for whether each planet is at perihelion or aphelion. Still, using this as a rough guide (ignoring acceleration and deceleration), you should be able to visualize space ships traveling right across the Solar System!

Earth-centric examples (with both planets on the same side of the Sun):



Earth (at perihelion) 3.35 - 0.11 = 3.24 Days 5.59 - 0.11 = 5.48 Days

Earth (at aphelion) 3.35 - 0.12 = 3.23 Days 5.59 - 0.12 = 5.47 Days

Answer 5

right this is yet yet lower back selection for you. at the instant the around holiday easy time from right here on the Goldstone Deep area monitoring Facility to Voyager a million (confident we nonetheless confer with Voyager a million on a typical foundation) is 27 hours, 19 minutes, and 26 seconds. (I study it off of my SOE) Now i understand Voyager is plenty previous Pluto yet you will get a sturdy thought of ways long it takes to get everywhere in area even on the fee of sunshine. It takes over an afternoon to get to Voyager a million and back on the fee of sunshine. exceptionally nifty eh?

Answer 6

It would dpend on time of day, traffic , and asteroid construction.

Answer 7

quite a while. y? u plannin on visiting some relatives?