Centauri triple-star system. Proxima Centauri is the closest star to our earth, not counting our sun. Driving at fifty-five miles per hour, how long do you think it would take us to drive to Proxima Centauri? To give you an idea, we could drive for 50,000 years, 100,000 years, 500,000 years, a million years, 10 million years, 20 million years —and we wouldn’t even be halfway there! Finally, 52 million years later, at fifty-five miles per hour, we would arrive at Proxima Centauri, the closest star to earth! Light currently travels at 186,000 miles per second, which is roughly 6,000 billion miles per year. In the time it would take you to say “1001,” which is approximately one second, light from the light bulb in the room where you’re likely reading this, could have traveled around our entire earth almost seven and one- half times (if it went in a circle instead of a straight line). Traveling at this incredible speed, it still takes light from Proxima Centauri
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