Question

How long does it take to travel \[500\] light-years?

Answer 1

Hint: Let us first talk about distance. The term "distance" refers to the distance between two points. To measure is to find out how far two geometric objects are apart. A ruler is the most popular tool for measuring distance. We use light-years to define the distance between most space objects.

Complete step by step answer:
Let us talk about Light-Year. The distance travelled by light in one Earth year is measured in light-years. A light-year is approximately \[\;6\] trillion miles long (\[9\]trillion km). That's a\[\;6\] followed by\[\;12\] zeroes. When we look at distant objects in space through strong telescopes, we are literally looking back in time. The speed of light is \[186,000\] miles per second (or \[300,000\] kilometres per second).

This appears to be very fast, but objects in space are so far away that their light takes a long time to reach us. The farther behind an entity is, the farther back we can see it. The nearest star to us is our Sun. It is located approximately \[93\] million miles away. As a result, it takes about \[8.3\] minutes for the Sun's light to hit us. This means we always see the Sun in the same position as it was \[8.3\] minutes before.

Let us calculate: This is dependent on the type of travel obviously, if it is light travel, then \[500\] years! But I'm guessing you're looking for a spaceship. A rocket must travel faster than\[\;618\] km per second to escape the gravity of the sun, so let's use this as our rocket's speed. As we know the speed of light is about \[300000\] km per second, so in a year, light travels \[300000 \times 3600\](Second in an hour) \[24\] (hours in a day) \[365\] (days in a year) which gives us \[9460800000000\] (or $9.4608 \times {10^1}^2$). So then multiply this by \[\;500\].
\[9.4608 \times {10^{12}} \times 500 = 4730400000000000\;({\text{ }}or\;4.7304 \times {10^{15}})\]

So that is how far we have travelled.
When t=time, d=distance and s= speed.
$t = \dfrac{d}{s}$
So, we need to carry out the following calculation:
\[\dfrac{{4730400000000000\;km}}{{618\;km/s}} = 7654368932038.835\,\text{seconds}\]
Divide this by the number of seconds in an hour, the number of hours in a day, and the number of days in a year:
$\dfrac{{7654368932038.835}}{{3600 \times 24 \times 365}} = 242718.447\,\text{years}$

Hence, it takes 242718.447 years to travel \[500\] light-years.

Note: The nearest star to us is our Sun. It is located approximately \[93\] million miles away. As a result, it takes about \[8.3\] minutes for the Sun's light to hit us. This means we always see the Sun in the same position as it was \[8.3\] minutes before.