[Johnny555]

And now refer back to the original quote:

especially if those astronomers live in nearby systems, such as around Proxima Centauri, the nearest star to Earth, or TRAPPIST-1, a star about 40 light-years away that hosts seven exoplanets, three of which are potentially habitable. If the signal is spotted from either of these nearby systems, the study finds, the same megawatt laser could be used to send a brief message in the form of pulses similar to Morse code.....“If we were to successfully close a handshake and start to communicate, we could flash a message, at a data rate of about a few hundred bits per second, which would get there in just a few years,”

And you'll see my point that you wouldn't say you can reach a star that's 40 light years away in "just a few years" when "just a few years" is 40.

Note that the starting number was 40, and the "to be compared with" number was 40. 40 is not "a few" of 40.

And yeah, I was a little sloppy in using "light years" as time.

[jessaustin]

That's not a point. You deliberately misinterpreted and continue to misinterpret the clear meaning of the text. Thanks for wasting my time.

[Johnny555]

I was pretty clear about my point in my original post, and even quoted the sentence in question.

Though it's disingenuous to reply multiple times to a HackerNews post to make a trivial point and then complain about wasted time -- you choose how to spend your time.