One lightyear.

For those how is interested here is the exact defination of one lightyear.

year 1900= 31556925,9747 s
speed of light: 299 792 458 m/s

31 556 925,9747 x 299 792 458 =
9 460 528 404 881 260 m

How many light years away is the nearest star?

Originally posted by Lavan
How many light years away is the nearest star?

Approx: 0,0000158 lightyears away, the star is called The Sun, the big yellow thing on the sky.

next star is Proxima Centauri: approx:4,3 lightyears away.

Whats the distance between the Sun and Mercury plus whats the average surface tempof mecury (the planet) in Degrees Celcius.

or you could have the temprature in a true scale KELVIN (ah yet another SCOTTISH INVENTION )

Originally posted by ooseven
Whats the distance between the Sun and Mercury plus whats the average surface tempof mecury (the planet) in Degrees Celcius.

or you could have the temprature in a true scale KELVIN (ah yet another SCOTTISH INVENTION )

Sun- Mercury: Approx: 58 million km
Average surface temp: 260 C or 533 K max: 420 C or 693 K, min -100 C or 173 K

I think the government just made up the distance of stars to make people shut up about aliens. Think about it... How big is the sun during day time to stars at night? Its like 0 to . right?Well they say on pluto the sun is just as big as other stars in the sky there. So they messed up there. We would have to make about the same distance to get to pluto to the next star, which I dont think is even a lightyear away. And if you wanna argue that our sun is relatively to others then you\'re wrong. The sun is one of the biggest we know of. So either way its all messed up.

Originally posted by Bossieman


Approx: 0,0000158 lightyears away, the star is called The Sun, the big yellow thing on the sky.

next star is Proxima Centauri: approx:4,3 lightyears away.

LOL, yes I meant nearest Star apart from the (our) Sun. You smartarse!

Didja know that the sun looses about 100 million tons of mass a second, and has been doing so for the last 4.6 billion years?  It\'s lost less than .1% of it\'s total mass in that time.  Cool eh (I should say hot, eh?  Since it\'s core is 15 million degrees K)?  It\'s as bright as 4 trillion trillion 100 watt light bulbs.. heh heh heh.

I have a *shudder* astronomy exam in 12 hours, 46 min!  arrrgh!

I think the government just made up the distance of stars to make people shut up about aliens. Think about it... How big is the sun during day time to stars at night? Its like 0 to . right?Well they say on pluto the sun is just as big as other stars in the sky there. So they messed up there. We would have to make about the same distance to get to pluto to the next star, which I dont think is even a lightyear away. And if you wanna argue that our sun is relatively to others then you\'re wrong. The sun is one of the biggest we know of. So either way its all messed up.

It would seem this way UNLESS you had studied physics, especially astronomy, in which case you would realise how small and almost insignificant (in the grand cosmic scheme) our sun really is. There are much brighter and larger suns (stars) then ours in the cosmos, and 2.6 billion miles can make a hell of a lot of difference in perspective..

without getting techincal, Alpha Centauri is the closest star

[nO-One]

Well they (as in they I mean a bunch of scientists) found a star that was supposed to be closer to us then Alpha Centaury.
PS.The Webster\'s back,long time no see

Originally posted by FatalXception
Didja know that the sun looses about 100 million tons of mass a second, and has been doing so for the last 4.6 billion years?  It\'s lost less than .1% of it\'s total mass in that time.  Cool eh (I should say hot, eh?  Since it\'s core is 15 million degrees K)?  It\'s as bright as 4 trillion trillion 100 watt light bulbs.. heh heh heh.

I have a *shudder* astronomy exam in 12 hours, 46 min!  arrrgh!

The Sun is transforming 384 million tons of Hydrogen each second into 380 million tons of Helium.
The difference of 4 million tons becomes pure energy.
E=MC¨2

snip snip (taken from my university\'s 2\'nd year astronomy textbook)

The Sun is an enormously powerful source of energy. Every second, it produces an amount of energy equivalent to the detonation of about 100 billion 1-megaton nuclear bombs. Put another way, the solar luminosity is equivalent to 4 trillion trillion 100-W light bulbs shining simultaneously—about 1019 dollars\' worth of energy radiated every second (at current U.S. rates)!
.....
Now let\'s calculate the energy produced in the fusion process and compare it with the 6  1013 J/kg needed to account for the Sun\'s luminosity. Careful laboratory experiments have determined the masses of all the particles involved in the conversion of four protons into a helium-4 nucleus: the total mass of the protons is 6.6943 10-27 kg, the mass of the helium-4 nucleus is 6.6466  10-27 kg, and the neutrinos are virtually massless. The difference between the total mass of the protons and the helium nucleus is 0.048  10-27 kg—not much mass, but easily measurable. Multiplying the vanished mass by the square of the speed of light yields 4.3  10-12 J—this is the energy produced by the fusion of 6.7  10-27 kg (the rounded-off mass of the four protons) of hydrogen into helium. It follows that fusion of 1 kg of hydrogen would generate 6.4  1014 J—more than enough to power the Sun, even for another 5 billion years. To fuel the Sun\'s present energy output, hydrogen must be fused into helium in the core at a rate of 600 million tons per second.

Auuugh!  I can\'t believe I\'m doing this now!  My astronomy final is in 2 hours 12 min!!!

Originally posted by ViVi
I think the government just made up the distance of stars to make people shut up about aliens. Think about it... How big is the sun during day time to stars at night? Its like 0 to . right?Well they say on pluto the sun is just as big as other stars in the sky there. So they messed up there. We would have to make about the same distance to get to pluto to the next star, which I dont think is even a lightyear away. And if you wanna argue that our sun is relatively to others then you\'re wrong. The sun is one of the biggest we know of. So either way its all messed up.

Very Good point!! makes u think.
although i dont think your information on the sun being one of the biggest stars we know of is correct i actually think its one of the smallest since it is only at about the half way point of its lifespan

Yes, our Sun is a \'G 3\' class star, which is somewhat small but extremely stable.

But there are \'O\' and \'P\'  class stars out there, which fall into the \'blue giant\' class of stars. They are EXTREMELY large,  often 20-50X the mass of our own sun. These stars are extremely unstable and tend to go \'supernova\'  under their own gravitation, usually leaving behind a neutron star or \'pulsar\' (which is actually a special kind of neutron star). Within a matter of minutes (or DAYS in some cases) their energy output can exceed that of an entire GALAXY.