Judy Kay Davidson, age 11, of Marshall, Tex., for her question:

How long does it take sunlight to reach us?

Allowing far traffic accidents and slow dawns, a beam of light travels about 18,000 miles a second. The sun's radiant energy whips through space at this speed and slows down a tiny fraction when it pierces the atmosphere of the earth.

In one minute, the light from the sun travels more than ii million miles. And the distance between the earth and the sun is almost 93 million miles. The sunbeam falling on your nose started out from the sun about eight and one third minutes ago. This is the time it takes for light to travel from the sun to the earth