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Editor's Note: This story originally gave the time it takes light to travel from the sun to Earth as just over eight seconds. The correct time is just over eight minutes. Your editor is very embarrassed.
Earth spins at 1,040 mph. Light travels 186,000 miles per second. It takes just over eight minutes for sunlight to reach Earth; light from the moon reaches us in just under 1.5 seconds. Light travels so far in a year that we use shorthand to describe that 13-digit unit of distance when mapping celestial bodies; the star nearest to our sun is Proxima Centauri, 4.24 light-years away.
