Random Science Trivia: How long does it take for sunlight to reach Earth?

in science •  6 years ago  (edited)

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Have you ever wonder how long does it take for the sunlight to reach the earth? Well one does not need to be a physics major to determine i. Just utilize google.com!

To do that, we need to consider the distance of the sun from the earth which is 149.6 million kilometers and of course the speed of light (since sunlight travels at the speed of light) which is 299.8 thousand kilometers per second.

We then divide the distance between the sun and the earth with the speed of light to finally determine time. Doing the math, we'll obtain 498.99 seconds or around 8 minutes and 19 seconds.

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So what does it mean? It means if we can directly look at the sun from the earth, we are actually looking at its position 8 minutes and 19 seconds ago!

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