Quote:
Originally Posted by Arkasha
Can someone please tell me. Travelling from Earth, at light speed, at which point in our solar system is a light year?
Thanks.
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May I ask, would you (or anyone that cares to answer) consider the orbit of Pluto to be the limit of our solar system, or the extent of the Oort cloud?
Light travels at 186,000 miles per second (300,000 kilometers per second). Therefore, a light second is 186,000 miles (300,000 kilometers). A light year is the distance that light can travel in a year, or:
186,000 miles/second * 60 seconds/minute * 60 minutes/hour * 24 hours/day * 365 days/year = 5,865,696,000,000 miles/year
A light year is 5,865,696,000,000 miles (9,460,800,000,000 kilometers).
Pluto's average orbit places it at around 5,874,000,000 km from the Sun.
This of course does not take into account time dilation and length contraction, for a person say travelling on a spaceship which is moving at 99% of c (The speed of light) this person on this hypothetical spaceship would experience one year for what an observer on earth would experience as approximately 22 years.
Suffice to say the limit of one light year extends far beyond our solar system, and other factors apply.