Aller vers le Soleil
Image Credit:
Solar Dynamics Observatory,
NASA
How long would it take to drive to the Sun?
Brittany age 7, and D.J. age 12,
ponder this question over dinner one evening.
James also age 7, suggests taking a
really fast racing car while
Christopher age 4, eagerly agrees.
Jerry, a really old guy who is used to estimating driving time
on family trips based on distance divided by speed, offers
to do the numbers.
"Let's see ... the
Sun is 93 million miles away.
If we drove 93 miles per hour the trip would only take us 1 million
hours."
How long is 1 million hours?
One year is 365 days times 24 hours per day, or 8,760 hours.
One hundred years would be 876,000 hours,
but that's still a little short of the 1 million hour drive time.
So the Sun is really quite far away.
Christopher is not impressed, but as he grows older he will be.
You've got to be impressed by something that's 93 million miles
away and still hurts your eyes
when you look at it!