Posted by Jack
NASA’s Kepler Space Telescope recently discovered an Earth-like planet orbiting a nearby star within the habitable zone of our galaxy. Kepler-186f is approximately 500 light-years from Earth in the Cygnus constellation.
The habitable zone, also known as the Goldilocks zone, is the region around a star within which planetary-mass objects with sufficient atmospheric pressure can support liquid water at their surfaces. While it has been estimated that there are at least 40 billion Earth-sized planets orbiting in our Milky Way Galaxy, this particular discovery is labeled the first Earth-sized planet to be found in the habitable zone of another star.
Question: If I could drive my car there at an average speed of 60 mph. how long would it take to travel 500 light years?
http://themindunleashed.org/2015/02/scientists-discover-another-earth.html
Speed of light = 186,282.397 mile per second
Speed of light = 670,616,629 mph
(670,616,629/60)*500 = 5,588,471,908 years 4 months
Pack a lunch!
I’m no math wiz but wouldn’t it be 670,616,629,000 mph? I think you left off three zeros.
Lets say that number (mph) equals M, so it would be M X 24 (hours in the day) X 365 (days in a year) x 500 years= 2.94 trillion, I think… I’m rounding off because I’m doing this in my head, well, head and a scratch pad. I don’t have a calculator that goes that high. Pack a lunch is right. (I’m still not sure I got the number right.)
Or… you could say since there are 5.87849981 miles × 10 to the 12th power in one light year, then times that by 500 = total distance. Then divide that by 60 = H total hours to get there. Divided by 24 to give you total days or D. D divided by 365 = Y for years. Try that in your head.
Or think of it like this…. if you burn about 80 calories per mile walked, you’d need two trillion Power Bars to fuel a trip of just one light year and you’ve still got 499 more light years to go! lol
Heh. Certainly no point in bothering with a mail forward.
I think you may be trying to over-think the issue.
For example to convert 1 mile per minute to mph multiple by 60 for 60 minutes per hour. If it was 1 mile per second multiply by 60 seconds per minute to get 60 miles per minute then multiply by 60 minutes per hour to get 3600 miles per hour.
Applying this to the speed of light; to get the speed of light in mph it would be
(speed of light miles per sec) * (60 sec/min) * (60 min/hr) = (speed of light in mph)
(186,282.397) * (60) *(60) = 670,616,629.2
I think we can drop the .2 mph.
Want to compute the projected number of restroom stops?
If I travel at a rate x times faster than you it will take you x times as long to cover the same distance. For example if I travel 10 times faster than you and I cover a distance in 2 hours it will take you 20 hours.
Here is how I calculated the amount of time the trip would take. If light travels 670,616,629 mph and your car travels at 60 mph light travels 11176943.82 times faster than your car (670, 616, 629 / 60). If light takes 500 years to cover the distance to the planet your car will take
(670,616,629/60)*500 = 5,588,471,908 years 4 months
Oh this looks like fun, don’t have the time to figure it out at the moment, but I will be back!
For anyone else that is reading all this I apologize for our nerd fest!
I saw something a few weeks back, NASA thinks it has found two huge planets at the outer edges of our solar system but can’t confirm it. I have lost faith in NASA.
#7, yes, I agree I actually didn’t read your base number correct, # of mph. But, you nailed it.