How far Away is the Sun?

It’s a question every kid (heck, every adult) wonders at some point in their life. How far away is the sun?

The problem is, the straightforward answer is so mindboggling that all you can do is say “Oh, wow. Cool. That’s pretty far.”

So, let’s start with the straightforward answer and try and visualize it from there, k?

On average, the sun is 150 million kilometers, or 93 million miles away from us here on earth. That’s so far, that the sun’s light itself takes 8 minutes to reach us. 8 minutes! LIGHT! THE SUPER FAST STUFF!

“Oh, wow. Cool. That’s pretty far.”

But how far is that really?

Well, let’s imagine you’re driving down the highway at 70 mph. How long would it take you to reach the sun without stops in a straight line.

Well, 93 million miles divided by 70 miles per hour gets us 1328571.42857 hours.

1328571.42857 hours divided by 24 gets us 55357.1428571 days.

55357.1428571 days divided by 365 gets us 151.663405088 years.

151.66 years. That’s 151 years and 8-ish months.

If you’d started driving in 1869, you would just now be reaching the sun.

If you left today, 11/22/2021, you wouldn’t reach the sun until sometime in 2173.

I wish there was an all-caps version of numbers.

Of course, we orbit the sun and the sun is moving through space wicked-fast, too, so there’s no way driving at that speed in a straight line would actually get you there in that amount of time. This is more of an “I just froze all of time and space” type of thing.

Okay, but what if you’re the Flash who in the DCEU can apparently run 8.3 million mph. IT WOULD STILL TAKE HIM 11 HOURS TO GET TO THE SUN. !! (that’s all-caps 11)

Space is big.

Time is scary.

The universe is beautiful.