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The light travel time from the Sun to Earth is approximately 8.3 minutes, commonly rounded to 8.5 minutes for simplicity. This duration is based on the average distance of about 93 million miles (or 150 million kilometers) between the Earth and the Sun, a distance known as an Astronomical Unit (AU).
Light travels at a speed of roughly 299,792 kilometers per second in a vacuum. By calculating the time it takes for light to cover the distance of one AU, we find that it takes about 8.3 minutes. This concept is essential in astronomy, as it illustrates how far away celestial objects are and provides insight into the communication delays between Earth and our solar neighbors.
Other choices, such as 5 minutes or 10 minutes, either underrepresent or overrepresent the actual time based on the known speed of light and the defined distance between the Sun and Earth. The option of 20 minutes is also significantly longer than the actual time, demonstrating a misunderstanding of the scale of distances in our solar system. Thus, the answer of 8.5 minutes accurately reflects the known light travel time for this specific distance.