If it takes 5 seconds for a laser beam to strike an object in space, how far away would that object be?

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Ray Dart Profile
Ray Dart answered

Light travels at 186600 mps in vacuo. This means that in 5 seconds the light from a laser would travel 186600 * 5

= 933000 miles away/

Yo Kass Profile
Yo Kass answered

Ray is right, based on the speed of light being 300,000 km/s or 186,000 miles/s, his calculation is correct.

The thing to remember is that lasers will never travel faster than the speed of light, despite visual illusions that suggest otherwise.

Here's an interesting related video that mentions a very similar calculation:

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