How long does it take to travel 500 light years?

1 Answer
Mar 18, 2016

242,718.447 years (3dp)

Explanation:

This depends on what is doing the traveling, obviously if it was light travelling, then 500 years! But I'm guessing you want some sort of spacecraft.

To escape the sun's gravity, a rocket has to exceed 618 km per second, so let's take this as the speed of out rocket.

The speed of light is about 300,000 km (or 300,000,000 m) per second, so in a year, light travels 300,000×3,600 (seconds in an hour) ×24 (hours in a day) ×365 (days in a year)
Which gives us 9460800000000 (or 9.4608×1012)

So then multiply this by 500
9.4608×1012×500=4730400000000000 ( or 4.7304×1015)

So that is how far we have travelled.
When t=time, d=distance and s=speed,
t=ds

So, we need to carry out the following calculation:
4730400000000000 km /618 km/s=7654368932038.835 seconds (3dp)

Divide this by seconds in a hour, hours in a day and days in a year
7654368932038.8353,600×24×365=242718.447 years (3dp)

Hope this helps; let me know if I can do anything else:)
A big thank you to AO8 for helping me with this!