Question

How long does it take to travel $500$ light-years?

Answer 1

Let us first talk about distance. The term "distance" refers to the distance between two points. To measure is to find out how far two geometric objects are apart. A ruler is the most popular tool for measuring distance. We use light-years to define the distance between most space objects.

Complete step by step answer:
Let us talk about Light-Year. The distance travelled by light in one Earth year is measured in light-years. A light-year is approximately $\;6$ trillion miles long ($9$trillion km). That's a$\;6$ followed by$\;12$ zeroes. When we look at distant objects in space through strong telescopes, we are literally looking back in time. The speed of light is $186,000$ miles per second (or $300,000$ kilometres per second).

This appears to be very fast, but objects in space are so far away that their light takes a long time to reach us. The farther behind an entity is, the farther back we can see it. The nearest star to us is our Sun. It is located approximately $93$ million miles away. As a result, it takes about $8.3$ minutes for the Sun's light to hit us. This means we always see the Sun in the same position as it was $8.3$ minutes before.

Let us calculate: This is dependent on the type of travel obviously, if it is light travel, then $500$ years! But I'm guessing you're looking for a spaceship. A rocket must travel faster than$\;618$ km per second to escape the gravity of the sun, so let's use this as our rocket's speed. As we know the speed of light is about $300000$ km per second, so in a year, light travels $300000 \times 3600$(Second in an hour) $24$ (hours in a day) $365$ (days in a year) which gives us $9460800000000$ (or $9.4608 \times {10^1}^2$). So then multiply this by $\;500$.
$9.4608 \times {10^{12}} \times 500 = 4730400000000000\;({\text{ }}or\;4.7304 \times {10^{15}})$

So that is how far we have travelled.
When t=time, d=distance and s= speed.
$t = \dfrac{d}{s}$
So, we need to carry out the following calculation:
$\dfrac{{4730400000000000\;km}}{{618\;km/s}} = 7654368932038.835\,\text{seconds}$
Divide this by the number of seconds in an hour, the number of hours in a day, and the number of days in a year:
$\dfrac{{7654368932038.835}}{{3600 \times 24 \times 365}} = 242718.447\,\text{years}$

Hence, it takes 242718.447 years to travel $500$ light-years.

Note: The nearest star to us is our Sun. It is located approximately $93$ million miles away. As a result, it takes about $8.3$ minutes for the Sun's light to hit us. This means we always see the Sun in the same position as it was $8.3$ minutes before.