What is 1.46966e+17 written out?
I am wanting to know the distance between Sagittarius A*, a super massive black hole, and earth, in miles. It is 25,000 light years away which is 1.46966e+17 miles but I do not know how to read this
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A light year is 6 trillion, or 6,000,000,000,000 miles.
and the black hole is 25,000 light years away.
6,000,000,000,000 × 25,000= 1.50000000E+17 and I want to see it written out
5,878,625,370,000 miles to be exact I think
1.46966e+17 is 1.46966×10 exponent 17 (10 to the 17th power)=146,966,000,000,000,000 miles.
I.e., 146 quadrillion, 966 trillion miles.
Except a light year is 9460730472580.8 km, which is approximately 5.88 trillion miles (not 6 trillion miles).
And that black hole is about 26996±33 light years away (not 25,000).
So more accurately, 9460730472580.8 km x 26996 ly x 0.62137119 miles / km = 1.58699370003045e+017 miles.
i.e. about 158,699,370,003,045,000 miles, with some rounding error, and even without rounding error, we only know within an error margin of about 66 light years.
(BTW, the “e+n” stands for “multiply by 10, n times”.)
the lightyear thing was kind of corrected, did not realize the 25,000 was a bit off. I checked a few sites that said 25,000.
Thank you. I always wondered how you did that
Also, remember everything is moving at different rates and different directions, so any measure of the distance is continually changing, and probably off by a light year or more.
(Earth is at perihelion to the Sun today, closest we are all year, an example of how astronomical distances are always in flux).
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