LIGHT YEAR • FREE-TRANSLATOR.COM • Definition of Light year

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/laɪt jɪr/ Listen

noun

Light year, Light-year n. (Astron.)

The distance over which light can travel in a year's time in a vacuum, 5.88 trillion miles (9.46 trillion kilometers); used as a unit in expressing stellar distances. It is more than 63,000 times as great as the distance from the earth to the sun. The star nearest to the earth's sun is about 4 light years distant.

A very large difference; used figuratively to express great differences (of distance, quality, time) in comparisons. "Although having the same rank and salary, they were light-years apart in their ability to perform their jobs."

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Etymology of 'Light year'

Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48

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"Light year" Quotes from Famous Books

... fifth-order projector rays, it was as plainly visible as though it were stationary. Lining up the path of the projectile accurately, he then projected himself forward in that exact line, with a flat detector-screen thrown out for half a light year upon each side of him. Setting the controls, he flashed ahead, the detector stopping him the instant that the invisible barrier encountered the power-plant of the exploring raider. An oscillator sounded a shrill and rising note, and Seaton slowly shifted his controls until he stood ...

— Skylark Three • Edward Elmer Smith

... system. It's stationed a half light-year away, where it has a legal right to be. Nothing to worry about as such. It's just a heavy armed frigate, which is the limit Tranest is allowed to build. Since it's Lyad's private boat, I imagine it's been souped up with everything they could throw in. Anyway, the fact that she sent ...

— Legacy • James H Schmitz

... concentration of features is more an expression of despair than grief. And it was the grief that this girl inspired that prevented me from mourning my mother as I should like to have mourned her, as she was worthy of being mourned, for she was a good woman, her virtues shone with more admirable light year after year; and had I lived with her, had I been with her during the last years of her life, her death would have come upon me with a sense of personal loss; I should have mourned her the day she died ...

— Memoirs of My Dead Life • George Moore

... on full acceleration fifteen hours ago, when we passed Neptune, and we have covered thirty billion miles—three hundred times as far as from the moon to the sun, but only one half of one per cent of a light-year." ...

— Out Around Rigel • Robert H. Wilson

... The astronomical light-year—that is to say, the distance which light travels in a year—was one of the things which he loved to contemplate; but he declared that no two authorities ever figured it alike, and that he was going to figure it for himself. I came ...

— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine