93 million miles away (approx) / 186,000 (approx) miles per second.
The roughly 5 minutes is in error. Heard that as a kid, never did the math.
Just checked. The orbit is somewhat elliptical, so they’re giving the average time.
The short answer is that it takes sunlight an average of 8 minutes and 20 seconds to travel from the Sun to the Earth.
http://www.universetoday.com/15021/how-long-does-it-take-sunlight-to-reach-the-earth/
blows my mind.
Well, if i can find myself 25 years ago i have a list of about 4 million things i want him to do differently.