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The actual average distance between the Earth and the Sun is about 149.6 million kilometers or approximately 93 million miles. This distance is known as an astronomical unit (AU). It is used as a convenient unit of measurement for distances within our solar system.

As for the time taken by sunlight to reach Earth, it is approximately 8 minutes and 20 seconds on average. This value is known as the light travel time. Since light travels at a finite speed (about 299,792 kilometers per second or approximately 186,282 miles per second) and the distance between the Earth and the Sun is not insignificant, it takes a finite amount of time for light to travel from the Sun to the Earth.

Regarding your question about length contraction and time dilation, these effects are associated with special relativity, which describes the behavior of objects moving at speeds close to the speed of light. However, for the everyday distances and velocities involved in the Earth-Sun system, these effects are negligible and not directly observable.

Length contraction refers to the apparent reduction in length of an object moving at a significant fraction of the speed of light as observed by an outside observer. Time dilation refers to the slowing down of time for a moving object relative to a stationary observer. These effects become more pronounced as an object's velocity approaches the speed of light, but for the relatively small velocities involved in the Earth-Sun system, the effects are not significant enough to be observed or measured.

Therefore, in the context of the Earth-Sun distance and the time taken for sunlight to reach Earth, length contraction and time dilation do not have a noticeable impact.

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