What is the distance to the nearest star?

[MightyMeanie]

What is the distance to the nearest star? Is the nearst star Proxima Centauri (and it being 4.3 lightyearsaway)? Whats the Distance across a galaxy and the size of te observable Universe?

 

[Labguy]

What is the distance to the nearest star? Is the nearst star Proxima Centauri (and it being 4.3 lightyearsaway)? Whats the Distance across a galaxy and the size of te observable Universe?

The first part of you question is answered here:

http://www.anzwers.org/free/universe/12lys.html

 

[Hurkyl]

en.wikipedia.org is often a good reference for lots of things. I entered "observable universe" into its search function, and it gives this page:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Observable_universe

 

[MightyMeanie]

en.wikipedia.org is often a good reference for lots of things. I entered "observable universe" into its search function, and it gives this page:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Observable_universe

thanks, i didnt know about wikipedia I've added it to my favourites thanks x

 

[hellfire]

From wikipedia:

The present distance (comoving distance) to the edge of the observable universe is larger, since the universe has been expanding; it is estimated to be about 78 billion light years

This is wrong. In the current cosmological model the edge of the observable universe would be located at about 46 billion lightyears.

 

[amt]

I was reading a book today which mentioned 78 billion light years.

 

[hellfire]

You can take a look to Ned Wright's "FAQ in Cosmology": http://www.astro.ucla.edu/~wright/cosmology_faq.html#DN
He explains also how to calculate this distance (however, this is not exact) and then you can convince yourself.

 

[ohwilleke]

To paraphrase Asimov, differences of less than a factor of ten are rarely important, except in the matter of salaries where factors of two matter.