The SPEED OF LIGHT vs. the LIGHT YEAR for Dummies!

I thought I would post a topic for the start of a discussion on THE SPEED OF LIGHT & THE LIGHT YEAR in relation to Space Travel. I am certainly not a rocket scientist by any means, but there is a lot of confusion in the forums on this subject. The main problem most people have is that they confusion the these as being one in the same thing, but they are NOT. One is a measure of VELOCITY while the other is a measure of DISTANCE! (Just forget about TIME for right now!) The [b]SPEED OF LIGHT[/b] is just what is sounds like. It is a measure of VELOCITY. The speed of light in vacuum, usually denoted by c, is a universal physical constant which is important in many areas of practical & theoretical physics currently understood by us. Its value is 299,792,458 metres per second, a figure that is exact since the length of the metre is defined from this constant and the international standard for time.[1] In imperial units this speed is approximately 186,282 miles per second. In metric units this speed is approximately [b] 300,000 kilometers per second.[/b] According to special relativity, c is the [b]maximum speed at which ALL energy, matter, and information in the universe can travel[/b]. It is the speed that all massless particles and associated fields (including electromagnetic radiation such as light) travel in vacuum. In the Theory of Relativity, c interrelates space and time, and also appears in the famous equation of mass–energy equivalence E = mc2.[2] Now in contrast, a[b]LIGHT YEAR[/b] is a measure of [b]VAST DISTANCE[/b] not Time as many confuse it with!!! A light-year (ly) is a unit of length, equal to just under [b]10 trillion kilometres[/b] (10×1015 meters, or about [b]6 trillion miles[/b]). As defined by the International Astronomical Union (IAU), a light-year is the distance that light travels in a vacuum in one Julian year. The light-year is often used to measure distances to stars and other huge distances on a galactic scale, especially in non-specialist and popular science publications, or made up fictional movies!!!! With respect to this story, the system of interest is the Zeta-Reticulli which is approximately 39 light-years from Earth. In other words, its about [b]39 TRILLION KILOMETERS[/b] from here!! OK, thats the "coles notes" version. Feel free to add whatever infomation you like....