New! Sign up for our free email newsletter.
Reference Terms
from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Light-year

A light-year or lightyear (symbol: ly) is a unit of measurement of length, specifically the distance light travels in a vacuum in one year. While there is no authoritative decision on which year is used, the International Astronomical Union (IAU) recommends the Julian year. A light-year is equal to 9,460,730,472,580.8 km (about 9.461 Pm; 5,878,625,373,183.61 statute miles; about 63,240 astronomical units or about 0.3066 parsecs. The exact length of the light-year depends on the length of the reference year used in the calculation, and there is no wide consensus on the reference to be used. The figures above are based on a reference year of exactly 365.25 days (each of exactly 86,400 SI seconds). A few examples of distances for light to travel are: Reflected sunlight from the Moon's surface takes 1.3 seconds to travel the 4.04 × 10-8 light years to Earth. It takes 8.3 minutes for light to travel from the Sun to the Earth (a distance of 1.58 × 10-5 light-years). The most distant space probe, Voyager 1, was 13 light hours (only 1.5 × 10-3 light years) away from Earth in September 2004. It took Voyager 27 years to cover that distance. The nearest known star (other than the Sun), Proxima Centauri is 4.22 light years away. The center of our galaxy, the Milky Way, is about 26,000 light years away.

Related Stories
 


Space & Time News

July 8, 2026

Researchers have created an AI-based simulation that makes it much faster to model how neutron star mergers produce many of the universe's heaviest elements. The new tool could improve predictions of these powerful explosions while helping ...
Scientists have taken an important step toward building quantum detectors that could reveal some of the universe’s biggest secrets. Using a prototype device with two clouds of ultracold atoms, ...
Scientists are calling for a lunar quarantine facility where samples from Mars, the Moon, and beyond would be examined before being brought to Earth. They warn that even a tiny alien microorganism ...
Researchers have created quantum control techniques that can make a system appear to run backward in time. By precisely managing quantum measurements, they can reshape the system's arrow of time and even harvest energy from the measurement process ...
A strange gamma-ray glow at the center of the Milky Way has long sparked debate over whether it comes from hidden neutron stars or elusive dark matter. By applying machine learning to more than a million simulated observations, researchers included ...
Scientists are raising concerns that we may be overlooking evidence of extraterrestrial life even when it is present. Hidden biosignatures, limitations in detection technology, and assumptions about what life should look like can all create ...
A new AI-powered framework could transform how astronomers measure the expansion of the Universe. By analyzing images of Type Ia supernovae and modeling their environments in unprecedented detail, researchers can estimate cosmic distances with ...
SETI scientists searched the interstellar object 3I/ATLAS for radio signals that could indicate extraterrestrial technology but found nothing beyond human-made interference. Even so, the rapid-response observations helped confirm the object's ...
NASA’s upgraded Cold Atom Lab is turning the International Space Station into a frontier for quantum research, creating ultra-cold matter that behaves in astonishing ways. The experiments could ...
The race to build data centers in space is gaining momentum as AI drives unprecedented demand for computing power. Orbital facilities could tap into abundant solar energy and avoid many of the environmental challenges faced on Earth. Yet space ...
A new SETI study suggests we may be overlooking alien signals not because they aren't there, but because their own stars are scrambling them before they escape into space. Turbulent plasma and powerful stellar storms can spread an ultra-narrow radio ...
Scientists found that transfer learning can make the search for new physics in the universe much faster, slashing the need for expensive simulations. Yet the approach can backfire when AI relies too heavily on familiar patterns, potentially missing ...

Latest Headlines

updated 12:56 pm ET