Can someone make me understand how long a lightyear is?

Question

Can someone make me understand how long a lightyear is?

Answer 1

The trip to the moon took astronauts a few days, but it takes light less than two seconds.  Now imagine going 1000 times as far.  It would take light just 20 minutes, but the astronauts 10 years.  Now imagine going 1000 times farther than that.  It would take light 10 days, but our astronauts 10,000 years.  Now imagine going 30 times farther than that.  That's a light year.  Light would take just one year, but our astronauts would take 300,000 years.  

Here's another way to think about it.  Imagine a cubic pile of pennies.  It's 1000 pennies wide, 1000 pennies long, and 1000 pennies tall.  You have 30 piles just like that.  Each one of those pennies is a trip almost to the moon and all 30 piles are how far you'd go in one year.

Answer 2

5,865,696,000,000 miles (9,460,800,000,000 kilometers)

Answer 3

well........think of how fast light travels   its how far it travels in a year     so a ery long way, its a time distance

Answer 4

A lightyear is not time, it's a measure of distance. It is how far light would travel in a whole year's time. (And light travels preetty fast. Light can go around the Earth 7 times in 1 second!) so a lightyear is a very long measure of distance, much much much longer than a mile or a million miles. About one trillion miles = 1 lightyear

Answer 5

a light year isn't an amount of time. its actually a matter of distance. a "light year" is basically the distance that light travels over one year. light travels exactly 9,460,730,472,580.8 km per year. thats a very long distance!

the term "light year" is a international unit of measure. Its alot easier to say "that object is 1 light year away" than saying "that star is 9,460,730,472,580.8 km away." sometimes objects' distance are way too far away for us to state in km. for example, the closest star, proxima centaurie is about 4.2 light years away. Its a lot easier for me to say "its 4.2 light years away" than saying its "39,735,068,000,000 km away".

its simply the distance that light travels over a period of one earth year. lightspeed is probably the fastest velocity any object can achieve- lightspeed. because light is so fast, we use the term "light year" to simplify answers like the distance between earth and certain celestial objects.

but we also use "light minutes", "light seconds", "light decades", "light centuries", and "light milleniums" to describe distances. again, these are just just used to simplify the distances. for example, the moon is 1.3 light seconds away. that means it takes light 1.3 seconds to go from the moon to the earth. its easier to say the moon is 1.3 light seconds away than saying its 250,000 miles away. light minutes, light seconds, light minutes, and light years are the most commonly used terms.

although the name may seem misleading, it is simply the amount of distance light travels in a certain time. so if it was "light second" its how far light travels in one second.

Answer 6

Lightyear isn't time, it's distance.  It's how far light travels in one of our years.

1 light year = 9.4605284 × 10^15 meters

(That's just under ten trillion kilometers).

Answer 7

The light-year is a measure of distance, not time. It is the total distance that a beam of light, moving in a straight line, travels in one year. To obtain an idea of the size of a light-year, take the circumference of the earth (24,900 miles), lay it out in a straight line, multiply the length of the line by 7.5 (the corresponding distance is one light-second), then place 31.6 million similar lines end to end. The resulting distance is almost 6 trillion (6,000,000,000,000) miles!

Answer 8

Hi,

Ok light year isn't long or short, its not a time factor.

Light year is used for measuring distance, it is distance that light travels in 1 year time. Because the distances in space are very very long, its hard to measure them in miles or kilometers because we'll end up with huge numbers, thus distances are measured in Light year to have smaller numbers.

1 Light year = 9.461×10^12

thus light year will be 9461000000000 km (which is a very large number).

Answer 9

a lightyear is the distance light travels in one year, light travels at 186,000 miles a second.

no one can make you truly understand how long it is, because its soooo long there is nothing at all to compare it to.

the best i can do is make you understand how long it actually is. a beam of light could circle the earth nearly 7 and a half times in one second. thats just a single second, amazing. imagine the distance that thing could travel in a year.

Answer 10

wow ,so many brains so little time ,here is my contribution,if you could travel at the speed of light it would take you 100,000  light years to go from 1 edge of the milky way galaxy through the center and to the other edge,............tom

Answer 11

THE DISTANCE THAT A PHOTON (LIGHT) TRAVELS IN A YEAR.

GIVEN A VELOCITY OF 186,281.79 MILES PER SECOND AS THE SPEED OF LIGHT TIMES THE LENGTH OF A YEAR ( 365.242195 DAYS X 24 HRS X 3600 SEC = 5,878,480,596,606.34992 MILES)

Answer 12

Light year is a unit of distance. It is the distance covered by a beam of light in 1 calendar year at a speed of 299,792.458kms^-1. That is 9.46x10^12km.

A long way.

Answer 13

A light-year is equal to:

exactly 9,460,730,472,580.8 km (about 10 Pm)

about 5,878,625,373,183.61 international miles

about 63,241 astronomical units

about 0.3066 parsecs

Answer 14

It is exactly 1 year long.

Answer 15

9.461×1012 km

light year is the distance light travels in one year.

speed of light(c)=299,792.458 km/sec

one year has 365 days each having 86400 seconds.that's it multiplyin the 2 figures with 'c' gives u wat u want

Answer 16

Light goes 186,282.4 miles every second.  A lightyear is how far light travels in a year, or 5,878,500,000,000 miles.