Question

Neptune (currently the most distant planet from the Sun!) lies about 4.5x109 kilometers from the Earth. If you were traveling toward Neptune at typical highway speeds (about 100 kilometers/hour) how many years would it take to reach Neptune?

Answer 1

Answer:

5,137 years.

Explanation:

we have a distance and the velocity, so we calculate the time:

$time = \frac{distance}{velocity}$

the distance is the distance between earth and neptune:

$distance = 4.5x10^{9}km$

and the velocity is the typical highway speed:

$velocity = 100km/h$

we divide this quantities:

$time = \frac{4.5x10^9km}{100km/h} =4.5x10^7hours$

it would take this many hours to get to Neptune at this speed.

Let's convert this to years:

there are 8760 hours in one year:

so the time in years is:

$time =\frac{4.5x10^7hours}{8760 hours/year}=5,136.99 years$

it would take about 5,137 years.