Convert light years to human years
Articles about distant stars and planets often use light years to describe the distances from Earth to these distant places. It often takes many human years before the light of these stars can reach us.
Examples of light years
In recent years, more and more planets outside of our solar system have been discovered. There is always talk of light years to indicate the distance of these stars and planets from us:
- The closest star to the Sun is Proxima Centauri with a little over 4 light years.
- The Milky Way measures about 100,000 light years from one end to the other.
- By the way, the sun is a little more than 8 light minutes away from the earth, so a sunbeam is 8 minutes away before we can see it on earth.
Definitions for light years and human years
- The human year is the time that the earth needs to completely orbit the sun. This is divided into 365 days in which the earth rotates around itself and with it the sun rises and sets for us.
- A light year describes the distance traveled by light - at a speed of around 300,000 kilometers per second - in the course of an earth or human year.
- With 365 days of 24 hours, each containing 60 minutes of 60 seconds each, this results in a huge number of almost 10 trillion kilometers.
- For comparison: there are around 1 billion cars on earth. If each of them covers 10,000 kilometers per year, all cars together would cover about a light year of distance in twelve months.
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How light years can be converted into human years
- The Voyager 1 spacecraft, the furthest from Earth, is around 18 light hours from Earth today, or five hundredths of a light year.
- Voyager 1 left Earth in 1977, 36 years ago today. So it took her 36 human years to cover a distance of 1/500 of a light year. So it would take her 18,000 human years to get through a single light year.
- While human years describe a period of time, a light year is used to measure a distance. A direct conversion is therefore not possible, only a calculation of the time that is required to cover this distance depending on the speed.
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