Growing Faster than

the Speed of Light?

 

How much further did the light travel?

 

It arrived 9 months later, so the question really is – How far does light travel in 9 months?

 

 

For this we need the speed of light.  As well as in ‘miles per year’ or ‘kilometres per year’ there are many ways that the speed of light can be expressed.  If you find it easier use one of these:

 

5,913,000,000,000 miles per year

9,461,000,000,000 kilometres per year

 

187,000 miles per second

11,220,000 miles per minute

673,200,000 miles per hour

1,156,800,000 miles per day

 

299,200 km per second

17,952,000 km per minute

1,077,000,000 km per hour

25,850,000,000 km per day

 

NB – There is some rounding in these figures!

 

 

Scroll down for our solution.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Using the figures for ‘miles per year’ and ‘kilometres per year’ from the previous page, the ‘time’ bit of the equation is 9/12 or ¾.

 

So we multiplied by 9 and then divided by 12.

(this is the same as multiplying by 3 and dividing by 4 instead)

 

We got a distance of

 

4.43 x 10¹² miles (4,430 billion miles or 4,430,000,000,000 miles)

7.1 x 10¹² kilometres (7,100 billion kilometres or 7,100,000,000,000 kilometres)

 

 

Considering the effect of any rounding, figures can be anywhere between 4,410 - 4,440 billion miles

(this is 7,060 - 7,100 billion kilometres)