light minute
1
8.1
- noun
- /laɪt ˈmɪnɪt/
- Specialized
:
minuto luz
- Scientists estimate that some of the stars we see are over a thousand light-minutes distant.
- forty light minutes
- only five light minutes
- five light minutes
Examples
-
It's about twenty-seven light-minutes out from Splendor, coming in at just over eight thousand K per second.
Fiction book (2002) -
If calculations are accurate, that should place you about twenty light-minutes downrange when you depart the 17171 state.
Fiction book (2001) -
It's all happening 12 light-minutes away... which means it takes 24 minutes for them to get the answer to any question they ask.
-
The rest were between ten and thirty light-minutes away.
Fiction book (1998) -
I say that time is the key element because for every light-minute away the ship is, that is one minute between the time of transmission and the time of reception.
Fiction book (2001) -
But they were almost two light-minutes farther away than Caroline had ventured.
Fiction book (2001) -
We were a good ten light-minutes away from Earth, so conversations tended to be a bit one-sided.
Fiction book (2001) -
"Five light-minutes," said the autopilot, its synthetic voice flat and emotionless in my mind.
Fiction book (1999) -
Billie had a headset on and was scanning the frequencies, listening in on messages sent across the long light-minutes of the solar system from one tiny little can of air to another.
Fiction book (2001) -
The sun is approximately eight light-minutes away from Earth.
How Far
- Specialized
109
4.9
- Specialized
- Specialized
- Specialized
1
8.1
- Specialized
Surface Forms
Morphology
The meaning is directly derivable from combining 'light' (the phenomenon that travels) with 'minute' (a unit of time): it denotes how far light travels in one minute, following the same compositional pattern as 'light-year' or 'light-second'. This is a transparent, cross-linguistically regular way to form distance units based on the speed of light, so a B1 learner who knows both words can reasonably infer the intended meaning.
Etymology
Light minute comes from a simple image: imagine how far light travels in one minute. So when people say something is 'a light minute' away, they mean the distance light (or a signal) needs one minute to travel, which explains delays in messages from space.