[gurjeet]

> ... data the avg person sees is 15 minutes delayed ..., that may as well be a light year.

Nit pick: you've got your units mixed up; minute is a unit of time, and light-year is a unit of distance.

[skybrian]

In astronomy, aren't they in some sense equivalent? Andromeda galaxy is 2.5 million light years way, so we are seeing it as it was 2.5 million years in the past.

[unethical_ban]

No. Light year is the distance.

Distance/time * time = distance

Waiting a "light year" would be a year.

Yes, you are correct that astronomers talk about seeing into the past by X number of years when we look at a galaxy X light years away.

[sitkack]

I blame George Lucas for this.

[mkl]

Star Wars confused parsecs with a unit of time, not light years.

[slater]

FYI there's apparently some retcon stuff about that, e.g. maybe the Kessel run is around a particularly dangerous area of space (black holes or w/e), so accomplishing it in LESS parsecs is something to brag about ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

[zem]

an earlier retcon was "that was Lucas's subtle way of showing that han solo talked a lot without necessarily knowing what he was taking about"

[Thorrez]

1 parsec ~= 3.26 light years

[sitkack]

> you've got your units mixed up; minute is a unit of time, and light-year is a unit of distance.

[redanddead]

fixed, thank you

[Teodolfo]

In some unit systems (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geometrized_unit_system) they are both units of length.

[guipsp]

They are not both units of length on that system either.