Question

(ik it says physics but astronomy is a field of physics sooo) A recently discovered planet in a different solar system is located 1.85 x 10^15 Miles from earth. To the nearest 10th of a light year, how far is this planet from earth? ly= 8.6

Answer 1

The distance, to the nearest tenth, is 314.9 light-years.

The given data is:

A recently discovered planet is located 1.85*10^5 miles from Earth.

Now we want to transform this distance to light-years.

Remember that a light-year is defined as "the distance that the light would travel in one year".

using the relation:

distance = speed*time

The speed of light is:

speed = 6.706*10^8 mi/h

And in one year has 8760 hours, then we have:

time = 8760 h

replacing these in the equation we get:

distance = speed*time

distance = (6.706*10^8 mi/h)*(8760 h)  = 5,874,456,000,000 miles

Son one light-year is equivalent to 5,874,456,000,000 miles

1 light-year = 5,874,456,000,000 miles

So to transform a distance in miles to light-years, we just need to divide that distance by 5,874,456,000,000 miles:

The distance between the new planet and Earth was:

D = 1.85*10^15 mi = ( 1.85*10^15)/(5,874,456,000,000) = 314.9 light-years.

if you want to learn more about this, you can read:

brainly.com/question/1302132