as in worlds
a huge physical or conceptual distance
my sister and I are close in age, but personality-wise, there are light-years between us
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Recent Examples of light-years
To date, this represents the largest-scale direct test of MOND, with scales ranging between 30 Mpc (about 100 million light-years) to 230 Mpc (about 750 million light-years).
—
Big Think, 21 Apr. 2026
The system studied by the team is known as Cygnus X-1 (Cyg X-1), located 7,000 light-years away and one of the brightest sources of X-rays in the sky.
—Robert Lea, Space.com, 21 Apr. 2026
Located 7,200 light-years away, Cygnus X-1 features not only a black hole — the first one ever identified more than a half-century ago — but a blue supergiant star, its constant companion.
—Marcia Dunn, Los Angeles Times, 20 Apr. 2026
Polaris is perched 433 light-years, or just over 2500 trillion miles, above the North Pole.
—Mike Lynch, Twin Cities, 19 Apr. 2026
No direct hits are required; shock waves from a jet can ripple across hundreds of thousands of light-years to churn galactic gas into stars or to extinguish star formation entirely by expelling those gas reservoirs into intergalactic space.
—Lee Billings, Scientific American, 16 Apr. 2026
At more than 440 million light-years away from Earth, the two black holes are inseparable even when seen through astronomy’s most advanced tools.
—Andrew Paul, Popular Science, 8 Apr. 2026
The weak force is so weak, however, that a neutrino could travel through light-years of lead without altering a single atom.
—Quanta Magazine, 8 Apr. 2026
Big Think, 21 Apr. 2026
The system studied by the team is known as Cygnus X-1 (Cyg X-1), located 7,000 light-years away and one of the brightest sources of X-rays in the sky.
—Robert Lea, Space.com, 21 Apr. 2026
Located 7,200 light-years away, Cygnus X-1 features not only a black hole — the first one ever identified more than a half-century ago — but a blue supergiant star, its constant companion.
—Marcia Dunn, Los Angeles Times, 20 Apr. 2026
Polaris is perched 433 light-years, or just over 2500 trillion miles, above the North Pole.
—Mike Lynch, Twin Cities, 19 Apr. 2026
No direct hits are required; shock waves from a jet can ripple across hundreds of thousands of light-years to churn galactic gas into stars or to extinguish star formation entirely by expelling those gas reservoirs into intergalactic space.
—Lee Billings, Scientific American, 16 Apr. 2026
At more than 440 million light-years away from Earth, the two black holes are inseparable even when seen through astronomy’s most advanced tools.
—Andrew Paul, Popular Science, 8 Apr. 2026
The weak force is so weak, however, that a neutrino could travel through light-years of lead without altering a single atom.
—Quanta Magazine, 8 Apr. 2026
Recent Examples of Synonyms for light-years
Noun
-
Klare combines the best of both worlds into one tidy Day 2 package, a 6-foot-4 pass-catcher who thrived from both the slot and as a run-blocker last year for the Buckeyes.—
Luca Evans,
Denver Post,
24 Apr. 2026
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Might seem like an outlier in the current array of articles and books about open marriages and polyamory, and at first glance the line of distinction between the two worlds, much like the division between blue and white tickets, seems almost old-fashioned.—
Literary Hub,
Literary Hub,
23 Apr. 2026
Noun
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Some even suggested galaxies could still be chock-full of gas but somehow not forming stars, which would be a real head-scratcher for anyone trying to understand stellar nurseries.—
Paul Sutter,
Space.com,
25 Apr. 2026
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Scientists are using Nvidia GPUs to examine the data and regularly discovering the oldest galaxies in the universe.—
Reed Albergotti,
semafor.com,
24 Apr. 2026
Cite this Entry
“Light-years.” Merriam-Webster.com Thesaurus, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/thesaurus/light-years. Accessed 26 Apr. 2026.
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