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Riding Light – A 43 Minute Real Time Journey from the Sun to Jupiter at the Speed of Light


riding light

Light travels at a speed of 186,282 miles per second.  Jupiter is 483,737,000 miles from the Sun.  In an effort to convey the vastness of space, Alphonse Swinehart created an animation to illustrate that even the fastest moving thing still takes over 43 minutes just to reach Jupiter.


“I’ve taken liberties with certain things like the alignment of planets and asteroids, as well as ignoring the laws of relativity concerning what a photon actually “sees” or how time is experienced at the speed of light, but overall I’ve kept the size and distances of all the objects as accurate as possible,” said Swineheart.


In addition, how long would it take to reach Neptune some 2,798,034,478 miles away?  Well it would take a little longer, about 4 hours and 10 minutes!

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