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

5,137 years.

Step-by-step explanation:

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

`time = (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 = (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 =(4.5x10^7hours)/(8760 hours/year)=5,136.99 years`

it would take about 5,137 years.