Let's say humans start living on different planets. In that case, have you ever imagined how much time it would take to communicate between Earth and the other planets. We can calculate this communication time by looking at distances between Earth and the other planets.
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The sites I've listed as sources, tell us about the minimum and maximum distances between Earth and the other planets. So using the distances given on those sites, lets do our calculation.
We know that the speed of light is 1080 million km/h or 18 million km/min. So, we'll use that formula to calculate the time a signal takes to reach from a planet to earth and vice versa.
Mercury
| Min distance (km) | Max distance (km) | Min time (mins) | Max time (mins) |
|---|
| 77 million | 222 million | 4.3 | 12.3 |
Venus
| Min distance (km) | Max distance (km) | Min time (mins) | Max time (mins) |
|---|
| 38 million | 261 million | 2.1 | 14.5 |
Mars
| Min distance (km) | Max distance (km) | Min time (mins) | Max time (mins) |
|---|
| 55 million | 401 million | 3 | 22.3 |
Jupiter
| Min distance (km) | Max distance (km) | Min time (mins) | Max time (mins) |
|---|
| 365 million | 601 million | 20.3 | 33.4 |
Saturn
| Min distance (km) | Max distance (km) | Min time (mins) | Max time (mins) |
|---|
| 746 million | 1700 million | 41.4 | 94.4 |
Uranus
| Min distance (km) | Max distance (km) | Min time (mins) | Max time (mins) |
|---|
| 2580 million | 3160 million | 143.3 | 175.6 |
Neptune
| Min distance (km) | Max distance (km) | Min time (mins) | Max time (mins) |
|---|
| 2700 million | 2900 million | 150 | 161.1 |
What about the Moon?
The Moon is much closer to Earth than any planet. The table below shows the distances and times it would take for signals to travel from the Moon to Earth and vice versa. Note that times for Moon here are given in seconds rather than minutes. The time taken is close to one second. So, you can have a pretty decent real time communication between people on Earth and the Moon.
| Min distance (km) | Max distance (km) | Min time (secs) | Max time (secs) |
|---|
| 0.225 million | 0.4 million | 0.75 | 1.3 |
I hope you enjoyed reading this article, and I would love to read your comments about it.
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