Say, if you travel....?

Question

1 light year away...how many years will it be in Earth time?

Can you reach the stars in 1 light year away?

Answer 1

It all depends on how fast you're traveling. Using the fastest speed an unmanned rocket has achieved (about 252800 km/hr) it would take around 4300 years to travel one light year.

Answer 2

A light year is a unit of distance, not time. A light year measures how FAR you travel, not how LONG.

A light year equals a little less than 6 Trillion miles.

So your question could be said this way and still say the same thing:

Say, if you travel....?
6 Trillion miles away...how many years will it be in Earth time?

Can you reach the stars in 6 Trillion miles away?

Answer 3

the closest star is the sun, considerably closer than 4 light years away.

remember that light-year is a unit of distance, not time.

and the thing about time being different to the traveler than it is to someone on the spaceship: the distance doesn't matter. the speed doesn't even matter. what matters is the acceleration. if you went to the nearest star going 50 miles an hour, time would pass exactly the same for you as it would on Earth. relativity only comes into play when you are accelerating. we do not currently have the technology to accelerate a person in a spaceship quickly enough to see any relativistic effect.

Answer 4

The closest star is 4 light years away. There are no stars at 1 light year distance.

The 'border' of the Solar System (where the Sun's influence ends), is about 1.5 light years.

There are no machines that can travel that fast at present technology.

IF, it were possible to travel so fast, you would reach the closest star in 4 years and take 4 year to return.

But on Earth time would have past so that your return was hundreds of years later.

Answer 5

So I think the question ends up being:
"If you were to travel 6 trillion miles out and back, at the speed of light, how many complete revolutions of the earth (days) would pass in that time frame?"

It looks like folks are concerned with pulling your question apart, rather than answering it. That means that they want to look smarter than you, but don't want to expose the fact that they have no idea.

Unfortunately, I don't have the education to answer this question. I apologize. I do, however have the education to understand the question you asked. You may want to edit it so when someone with an astronomy education comes across it, they can give you a good answer, rather than just pick your question apart.

Academics are real stuffy like that.

Answer 6

here you go, do the math :
1 light year equals :
IAU: Julian year 365.25 days
Gregorian year 365.2425 days
1900 mean tropical year 365.242199 days