Post by Radrook Admin on May 31, 2022 2:59:18 GMT -5
How far is our Nearest Star?
How near is our nearest star or star system? Although the word "near" seems to describe closeness, this is really an illusion in this case. At the current speeds that our Voyagers are travelling, Voyager 1 moving at a speed of 38,210 miles per hour (17 km/s) and Voyager 2 moves at a speed of 35,000 miles per hour, it would take 75,000 years to get there. So in reality, there are really no near stars to our sun, including the closest which is four light-years away- a light-year being the distance that light travels in one year at the speed of 186,000 miles per second. That's fast enough to circle the Earth seven-and-a- half times in one second.
Now, there are sixty seconds in every minute, and sixty minutes in every hour, twenty-four hours in every day, and three-hundred sixty-five days in each year. So the distance that light travels travel to reach our nearest star in four years is truly staggering.
Lets consider it in detail. First, let's used the number of times that light can circle the earth at that speed.
7 1/2 times around the Earth in one second.
27,000 times around the Earth in one minute
1,620,000 times around the Earth in one hour
38,880,000 times around the Earth in one day.
14,191,200.000 around the Earth in one year
56,764,800,000 around the Earth in four years.
Now, using the same numbers, let's see how much distance light needs to travel to arrive at Alpha Centauri.
At 186,000 miles per second in one second, the distance covered is the following.
11, 160,000 That's eleven million, one-hundred and sixty-thousand miles in one minute.
669,600,000 That's six- hundred and sixty- nine million, six hundred- thousand miles in one hour.
16,070,400,000 That's sixteen billion, seventy-million, four-hundred thousand miles in a day.
5,865,696,000,000 That's five trillion, eight hundred sixty five billion six hundred million miles a year.
23,462,784,000,000 That's twenty-three trillion, four- hundred sixty-two billion, 784 million miles in four years.
Remember, that is at the speed of one-hundred eighty-six thousand miles every single second of those four years, a velocity that would get us to the moon in just two seconds, and to our sun which is approx. 93 million miles away, in just eight minutes.