Reviewing a friend's blog and the mention of Saturn inspired curiosity. Here are information tidbits I dug up about Solar & stellar distance units in general and Saturn in particular.
A light year is about 6 trillion miles (5,850,000,000,000 miles). For more information on a light year, check out my post dated yesterday.
Distance of Saturn from Earth is 821,190,000 miles (821 million miles, approx)
Saturn is an average of 10 times farther from the sun than Earth. We see Saturn as it was about 80 minutes ago. So, its about 80 light minutes away. Similarly, as the Sun's light takes 8 minutes to reach Earth, the Sun is 8 light minutes away from our earth.
Light year usually is a term that is used to measure relatively large distances in the universe.
For the distances within the solar system, which are comparitively lesser (yes!) to the distances measured across the universe (for example distance between earth and andromeda is 2.5 million light years), the unit used is Astronomical unit. A Astronomical unit is the average distance between the sun and the earth - about 93 million miles (150 million kilometers). Given that, in Astronomical units, the distance between Earth and Saturn is 8.833 A.U.
1 comment:
On the topic of sun, here are some fundas to help you scratch that itch:
in regards to the strength of 256-bit encryption:
now, the annual energy output of our sun is about 121 * 10^41 ergs. this is enough to power about 2.7 * 10^56 single bit changes on our ideal computer; enough state changes to put a 187-bit counter through all its values. if we build a dyson sphere around the sun and captured all of its energy output for 32 years, without any loss, we should power a computer to count up to 2 ^ 192. of course, it wouldn't have the energy left over to perform any useful calculations with this counter.
but that's just one star, and a measly one at that. a typical supernova releases something like 10^51 ergs. (about a hundred times as much energy would be released in the form of neutrinos, but i let them go for now.) if all this energy could be channeled into a single orgy of computation, a 219-bit counter could be cycled through all of its states.
these numbers have nothing to do with the technology of the devices; they are the maximum that thermodynamics will allow. and they strongly imply that brute-force attracks against 256-bit keys will be infeasable until computers are built from something other than matter and occupy something other than space.
bruce schneier, applied cryptography, p 158
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