Centimeters to Light-minutes (cm to lmin)

1 centimeter equals 5.559401587×10⁻¹³ light-minutes (rounded).

1 centimeter = 5.559401587×10⁻¹³ light-minutes

How to convert centimeters to light-minutes

To convert centimeters to light-minutes, multiply the number of centimeters by 5.559401587×10⁻¹³. The factor is rounded to 10 significant digits. To go the other way, multiply light-minutes by 1,798,754,748,000.

light-minutes = centimeters × 5.559401587×10⁻¹³

Example: 10 centimeters = 5.559401587×10⁻¹² light-minutes.

About these units

Centimeter (cm)

Metric (SI)Current unit

One hundredth of a meter. Used for body measurements, clothing and everyday objects.

Scientists, rather than shopkeepers, gave the centimeter its place. In 1832 Carl Friedrich Gauss proposed a system of absolute units built on length, mass and time, choosing the millimeter, milligram and second. In 1873 a committee of the British Association for the Advancement of Science, whose members included James Clerk Maxwell and William Thomson (Lord Kelvin), recommended the centimeter, gram and second instead. That CGS system dominated physics for decades, until the metre-kilogram-second system replaced it in the mid-twentieth century and led to SI.

CGS units proved awkward for rooms and buildings, which run to hundreds of centimeters, but the centimeter itself never went away. It is still the everyday unit for height, clothing and small objects, and it appears in map scales and rainfall reports. An adult fingernail is roughly one centimeter wide, and a milliliter is defined as exactly one cubic centimeter. An inch is exactly 2.54 centimeters. The CGS system itself survives mainly in theoretical physics and astrophysics, where Gaussian units are still common.

1 centimeter = 0.01 meters (exactly).

Sources: Wikipedia: Centimetre-gram-second system of units; Wikipedia: Centimetre; NIST Guide to the SI, Appendix B.8: conversion factors

Light-minute (lmin)

AstronomicalCurrent unit

The distance light travels in a minute (about 18 million km). The Sun is roughly 8.3 light-minutes from Earth.

Sunlight takes about 8.3 minutes to reach Earth, so the light-minute is the natural scale for the inner solar system. Its figure is exactly 60 light-seconds, which comes to 17,987,547,480 meters or about 18 million kilometers. The unit has no formal standing in the SI and no single inventor. It simply follows from the fixed speed of light, and it turns up in popular astronomy, in discussions of signal delays and in tables that give planetary distances as travel times.

Distance and delay are the same number in this unit, which makes it handy for spacecraft work. A signal to a distant spacecraft therefore cannot be answered instantly, because every light-minute of separation adds a minute each way. One astronomical unit is about 8.317 light-minutes, and Saturn's orbit at its closest approach to the Sun lies near 1.25 light-hours. Larger distances usually move up to light-hours or light-years.

1 light-minute = 17,987,547,480 meters (exactly).

Sources: Wikipedia: Light-minute; Wikipedia: Light-second

Related conversions

See all length units.