This topic has been archived, and won't accept reply postings.
Just saw this online. I did a bit of looking around and it seems accurate.
After the Sun, the closest star to the Earth is about 4 light years away. In the 48 years since Voyager 1 was launched the distance it has travelled about 1 light day.
Dave
14
In reply to Tringa:
Space is big. You just won't believe how vastly, hugely, mind-bogglingly big it is. I mean, you may think it's a long way down the road to the chemist's, but that's just peanuts to space.
43
1
In reply to Tringa:
A light day! quite impressive really. Not sure how far I have travelled, currently my 70th orbit of this star is under way. What is that in light minutes or hours? Allowing for daily rotations during the orbit of course.
AI says in answer to "what distance in light minutes does Earth travel in a year" "In one year, Earth travels approximately 8.3 light minutes. This is because the Earth's average distance from the Sun is about 8.3 light-minutes, and it completes one orbit around the Sun in a year. " Can you believe it??
Has it ever heard of PI? OK I know orbits are elliptical but where does it think the earth goes in a year, halfway to the sun and back? Or am I missing something?
Post edited at 12:09
17
In reply to wercat:
Confidently wrong.
7
In reply to wercat:
According to a quick Google, which may or may not be more accurate than your AI search, the earth travels roughly 584 million miles per lap of the sun. This would take light about 52 minutes to cover. 70 laps around the sun = approx 2.5 light days.
Congratulations! You've travelled 2.5 times as far as Voyager!
9
In reply to wercat:
>where does it think the earth goes in a year, halfway to the sun and back? Or am I missing something?
AI’s answer seemed fishy to me and I was just going to start calculating when I read your refutation - very elegant and immediately visualizeable (if that’s a word), thanks for saving us the time and effort!
Question is - if AI messes up even a primary school maths calculation like this one, how on earth can we trust it with anything else? And to whom do we complain?
Post edited at 14:49
13
In reply to Tringa:
Yep. And in other terms, Voyager would take about 80,000 years, travelling at its speed of 35,000mph, to get to Alpha Centauri.
And our our own galaxy contains several billion stars.
And there are hundreds of billions of galaxies 🤔
2
In reply to captain paranoia:
> Space is big. You just won't believe how vastly, hugely, mind-bogglingly big it is.
And the average distance between stars is 4-5 light years.
That's about 1.2 Parsecs between stars. Hans solo can do 12 Parsecs delivering cigarettes to Jabba, so we've got a bit of catching up to do.
4
1
In reply to Tringa:
I’d love to properly understand space but I just don’t get time.
25
In reply to Wide_Mouth_Frog:
That's based on the assumption that the Sun is stationary.
It's all relative😎
> According to a quick Google, which may or may not be more accurate than your AI search, the earth travels roughly 584 million miles per lap of the sun. This would take light about 52 minutes to cover. 70 laps around the sun = approx 2.5 light days.
> Congratulations! You've travelled 2.5 times as far as Voyager!
8
In reply to artif:
> It's all relative
Indeed. The sun is rotating around the milky way, which, in turn, it moving through space. But we're talking about stars within our galaxy...
[cue Monty Python Galaxy Song...]
4
In reply to captain paranoia:
Apparently our sun is moving around the milky way at @830000 km/h
https://starchild.gsfc.nasa.gov/docs/StarChild/questions/question18.html
1
In reply to Tringa:
We are all used to the idea of the space between the stars, or even the stars and the planets, being much larger than the stars themselves.
What still surprises me is that the space between galaxies is much much smaller in proportionate terms.
1
2
In reply to Jimmy D:
And the Parker probe, which is going over 10 times as fast,. and is the fastest object ever made by man, is still only 0.06%c
In reply to Tringa:
I highly recommend cycling/walking the Solar System Way in York. It's a scale representation set on the old ECML to Selby.
Without barely kicking one's imagination into gear, you can get a real physical sense of how vast and empty space is.
It's about 7 miles to Pluto by which time you might be getting a feeling of isolation, then it's 44,000 miles to Alpha Centauri ...... of emptiness.
Post edited at 20:27
2
In reply to Tringa:
More on their current status
https://science.nasa.gov/mission/voyager/where-are-voyager-1-and-voyager-2-...
What is most remarkable is that they are still going.
1
In reply to Tringa: it’s always interesting to read various people takes on the numbers involved with this and how people try to get thier heads around it . Generally accepted numbers :
the milk way : 100 - 400 billion stars
the universe : 100 - 400 billion galaxies
my favourite mind f@uk is this , why don’t we know more accurately than these pretty wide estimates ?
One of the reasons is the idea / possibility that light from the edges of the universe has not had time to reach earth yet since the Big Bang
Post edited at 08:07
In reply to The Lemming:
Another theory is that most of the galaxies are rotating in the same direction, and we can only see so far back in a sort of circular frame.
Something must be causing the majority of the galaxies to rotate in a general direction, could this be because we are all inside a Black Hole that is rotating in a direction that causes our universe to rotate in a general direction?
In reply to mike123:
This will help you understand the uncertainty and why.
https://bigthink.com/starts-with-a-bang/how-many-stars-milky-way/
you also need to distinguish the observable Universe from the complete Universe. There is light from galaxies out there that we will never see as Spacetime is expanding faster than speed of light those distances,
2
In reply to Brass Nipples:
Theories keep changing. And its making my brain hurt.
1
In reply to The Lemming:
Concerning your point that most galaxies rotate in the same direction, I think this is incorrect. I think the ratio between clockwise and anticlockwise rotation is pretty much 1:1
1
In reply to Maggot:
If that's the same installation that was in Cambridge a while back, it is fantastic. You just have to be in awe of people discovering dwarf planets !
In reply to While E. Coyote:
Depends which direction you look from ..
2
In reply to The Lemming:
> Theories keep changing. And its making my brain hurt.
Meet the Cosmic Web. not a theory, what has actually been observed.
https://www.iflscience.com/meet-the-cosmic-web-the-largest-structure-in-the...
In reply to Maggot:
> I highly recommend cycling/walking the Solar System Way in York. It's a scale representation
There's something similar in Anstruther in Fife https://www.atlasobscura.com/places/anstruther-model-solar-system
In reply to wercat:
> Not sure how far I have travelled, currently my 70th orbit of this star is under way.
I prefer to measure my velocity relative to the furthest observable parts of the Universe.
It's a personal decision. But it does mean I am currently moving 2.5 times the speed of light. Screw you Einsteine. Something to do with space expanding, I don't know. But I'm moving fast.
So I have moved many many many light years in my time on earth.
1
In reply to montyjohn:
'But it does mean I am currently moving 2.5 times the speed of light. '
Hmm, interesting. What does that feel like then?
In reply to Tringa:
Our bodies emit photons all the time. My earliest have travelled almost 60 light years and will still be going when the Universe ends.
In reply to Tringa:
Meanwhile , how big is stuff in Spacetime?
https://youtu.be/5zlcWdTs2-s?feature=shared
Post edited at 21:29
In reply to Tringa:
Another window on space that’s just opened up: the Rubin Observatory will add to our knowledge of billions of galaxies-
https://www.cnn.com/2025/06/23/science/vera-rubin-observatory-first-images
1
In reply to Jimmy D:
Currently about the same time it takes to get from Ross on Wye to Hereford.
For Voyager's sake, let's hope Alpha Centauri isn't coned off.
1
In reply to captain paranoia:
AI Overview
In a typical human lifetime, a person will travel approximately 80 billion kilometers (50 billion miles) due to Earth's orbit around the Sun. This distance is calculated based on Earth's orbital speed of about 30 kilometers per second (19 miles per second) over an average human lifespan.
Here's a breakdown:
Earth's Orbit:
The Earth's primary movement is its orbit around the sun, which is about 30 km/s.
Distance Traveled:
Considering an average lifespan of 66 Earth years (or 2.08 billion seconds), this results in a total distance of roughly 62 billion kilometers, according to New Scientist.
Galactic Movement:
The Earth, and therefore humans, also travels with the solar system around the center of the Milky Way galaxy, but this is a separate calculation.
Total Distance:
The total distance traveled, including the Earth's orbit and the solar system's galactic movement, is significantly greater.
if it can be trusted!
> Indeed. The sun is rotating around the milky way, which, in turn, it moving through space. But we're talking about stars within our galaxy...
> [cue Monty Python Galaxy Song...]
Post edited at 09:04
1
In reply to wercat:
Not sure how it reconciles its opening gambit of 80 billion with the later value of 62 billion (which tallies with the value calculated from orbital circumference). Add in another billion from the spinning earth (at equator).
1
In reply to captain paranoia:
perhaps inconsistent values for human lifespan?
It likely comes down to different lifespan assumptions. 66 vs. 80 years would explain the 62 vs. 80 billion km figures. Plus, slight variations in orbital speed (29.78 vs. 30 km/s) and whether Earth's rotation is included can add up over time. Easy to see how the numbers diverge with so many variables!
In reply to wercat:
I was assuming the "here's the breakdown" was the analysis supporting the opening statement, not another answer
But I guess that's AI...
In reply to mike123:
> why don’t we know more accurately than these pretty wide estimates ?
Presumably because, assuming it was even possible to pick them out, anyone who tried to properly count each individual star would die before getting anywhere close
In reply to Maggot:
"It's about 7 miles to Pluto by which time you might be getting a feeling of isolation, then it's 44,000 miles to Alpha Centauri ...... of emptiness. "
Well there is the Oort Cloud in New Zealand
Post edited at 16:30
In reply to captain paranoia:
I was out for ten miles walking and trotting round the local roads thinking about this and came up with between 20 and 30 thousand million miles over 70 years. That was in ignorance of the actual distance of the circuit of the earth round the sun and just doing some very rough and probably wrong mental arithmetic based on 93 million miles * pi * 70 years.
However it seems that the earth's circuit is about twice what I thought because I had used pi * r instead of pi * d which would give the 50 thousand million miles in 70 years/orbits. (excuse is I did my GCE maths 54 years ago then did Arts A levels)
We then come to the question of how much younger we'd be after 70 years than if we had been "stationary"
Post edited at 18:23
In reply to Katelon:
it looks to me as if we're travelling at about a light minute per week
In reply to wercat:
AI way out.
About 1.5 trillion km according to
https://www.space.com/human-travel-trillion-miles-lifetime-universe-motion
1
In reply to Brass Nipples:
All depends on your frame of reference, really.
1
This topic has been archived, and won't accept reply postings.
Loading Notifications...