• Question: Is it true that it takes 8 mins for light to reach the earth,if yes why?

    Asked by Tanko to Andrea, Charlie 🚀, Col Op, Kirsty, Vinita on 15 Jun 2016. This question was also asked by winter wolfs.
    • Photo: Kirsty Lindsay

      Kirsty Lindsay answered on 15 Jun 2016:

      Yes.
      This is because that’s how long it takes like to travel the distance from the Sun to Earth.
      It takes that long because space is really big.
      So big that using kilometers and miles to measure distance stops making sense- the numbers just get too big. Scientists instead use ‘light-years’ 1 light-year= as far as a photon (or 1 bit of light) can travel in 1 year, light travels at the same speed in the vacuum of space, so we can work out how far that is.

    • Photo: Andrea Boyd

      Andrea Boyd answered on 15 Jun 2016:

      Light speed: 299 792 458 metres / second
      Distance Sun to Earth: 149 600 000 000 metres

      Cancel out the metres to get the time:
      Distance / Light speed = 499 seconds = 8 minutes

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