To calculate the time it would take for light to travel from a star that is four quadrillion miles away, we need to convert the distance to a more commonly used unit, such as kilometers.
One mile is approximately equal to 1.609 kilometers. Therefore, to convert four quadrillion miles to kilometers, we can multiply the distance by 1.609:
4 quadrillion miles * 1.609 kilometers/mile = 6.436 quadrillion kilometers.
Now that we have the distance in kilometers, we can calculate the time it takes for light to travel this distance.
The speed of light in a vacuum is approximately 299,792 kilometers per second. To determine the time it takes for light to travel a certain distance, we divide the distance by the speed of light:
6.436 quadrillion kilometers / 299,792 kilometers per second ≈ 21,464,038,868 seconds.
To convert this into a more understandable unit, we can divide by the number of seconds in a year:
21,464,038,868 seconds / (60 seconds/minute * 60 minutes/hour * 24 hours/day * 365.25 days/year) ≈ 681.3 years.
Therefore, it would take approximately 681.3 years for light to travel from a star that is four quadrillion miles (6.436 quadrillion kilometers) away to reach Earth.