The Milky Way has a radius of approximately 100,000 light years. How many miles is that? How long would it take you to travel across our galaxy if you were traveling at 50% the speed of light (show work)?
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To convert light years to miles, we need to know the conversion factor.
1 light year is defined as the distance light travels in one year, approximately 5.88 trillion miles. So, we can use this conversion factor to calculate the distance in miles.
To calculate the number of miles in 100,000 light years:
100,000 light years * 5.88 trillion miles per light year
= 588 trillion miles
Therefore, the Milky Way has a radius of approximately 588 trillion miles.
Now, let's calculate the time it would take to travel across the Milky Way if you were traveling at 50% of the speed of light.
The speed of light is approximately 186,282 miles per second.
So, traveling at 50% of the speed of light would be:
0.5 * 186,282 miles per second = 93,141 miles per second
To calculate the time, we divide the distance by the speed:
Time = Distance / Speed
= 588 trillion miles / 93,141 miles per second
≈ 6.31 billion seconds
≈ 105 million minutes
≈ 1.76 million hours
≈ 73,330 days
≈ 201 years
Therefore, it would take approximately 201 years to travel across the Milky Way galaxy at 50% of the speed of light.