kiloparsec

[kil-uh-pahr-sek]

noun

1. a unit of distance, equal to 1000 parsecs. kpc

Word History and Origins

Origin of kiloparsec¹

First recorded in 1920–25; kilo- + parsec

Example Sentences

Biosignatures, Wright said, are going to be “extremely challenging to detect — if they exist. So that’s two big ifs. It’s very possible that life is just so rare that there’s nothing within a kiloparsec for us to find.”

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But technology, he explained, could have started the same distance away — a kiloparsec is 3,261 light-years in distance — and moved closer to Earth over eons.

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A kiloparsec is 1,000 parsecs or 3,262 light-years.

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“We don’t expect life to be easy within the inner kiloparsec of the Milky Way,” says Abraham Loeb from the Harvard–Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics.

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Past models have ignored the innermost kiloparsec, Forgan says, because astronomers were not sure how to take into account the supermassive black hole.

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