Light Year

[juicyjamie18]

How long is a ligh year?

[druiaghtagh]

The time light travels in a year... 186000 miles a second x60x60x24x365

[Mattk]

surely it the distance time travels in one year ? the time IS one year !!!!!

[Gef]

Sorry Mattk but a light year is a unit of distance not time. It's about 6 billion miles.

[Gandy]

Mattk was making a valid point

[Mattk]

gef- are you agreeing with me ? it sounds like youre not,but youve just proved my point so i take it you are !!!

[New Forester]

Druiaghtagh was right, except for saying time instead of distance. Everyone else was right too... If you do druiaghtagh's sum (and add the quarter day to make a whole year) you get 5,869,552,896,000 miles.

[New Forester]

Oh, except Gef -- it's about 6 thousand billion, so only a thousand times out...

[sddsddean]

Unless you stick to good old British billions (1,000,000,000,000) which is much more logical than boring American bilions (1,000,000,000), and before anyone tells me, yes I know we have officially changed to US billions, but that doesn't mean I have to agree with it!!

[bernardo]

Oh what a load of confuzzlement in just a few answers!

druiaghtagh obviously meant to write "the distance light travels...";

Gef was correct in saying "about 6 billion miles", because 5,869,552,896,000 [New Forester's figure] is "about 6 billion";

Mattk was making a valid point because he was confused by druiaghtagh's typographical error;

New Forester was a thousand times wrong, because "5,869,552,896,000" is about 6 billion, not about 6 thousand billion;

sddsddean is correct in saying that a billion is 1,000,000,000,000, but is wrong to say that we have "officially changed" to the incorrect, illogical and inaccurate American so-called billion of 1,000,000,000;

ansteyg also seems to have made a typographical error by writing "The distance time travels in one year is not a light year it is a year" instead of "The distance time travels in one year is not a year it is a light year" etc.

And knowing my luck, my answer will become erronious as soon as I have clicked the "submit" button, due to the insertion of a typographical error by the resident AB gremlins.

[bernardo]

I KNEW IT! I TOLD YOU SO! I definitely put a </I> in there, after the "is" in the 5th paragraph!

[Mattk]

the question was 'how long is a light year' - so the answer is 1 year if it had read how far is a leap year it would be a distance is that alright with you ansteyg ?

[bernardo]

No, ansteyg, it is you who seem to be confused. You said that the distance was a "year", and not a "light year" etc, when it would have been accurate to say that the distance was a "light year", not a "year".

Mattk did not appear to have been confused or facetious; Mattk was pointing out accurately that a light-year is a distance, and that a year is a time.

Gef obviously misread Mattk's answer, because Gef seemed to be "correcting" Mattk even though they were agreeing with each other.

And Mattk's most recent answer shows that he actually misunderstood the original question, because the question "How long is a light year?" could refer equally well to "how long" a distance, as well as "how long" a time. It is not necessary to say "how far" when referring to a distance; "how long" is equally correct.

I think that someone is pretending not to understand something somewhere...

[bernardo]

No, Mattk, it is not OK with me. The question "how long" could equally well refer to a distance or a time.

e.g. "How long is a mile?" (Answer: 5280 feet) does not have to be "What distance is a mile?" in order to make sense.