Some of them are even billions of light-years away. Many celestial objects are light-years away from us. The nearest star system to us, Alpha Centauri, is 4.3 light-years away from us, and thus we would get there in around 4.3 years. The light from the Sun takes about 8 minutes to reach our eyes, and as such, the Sun is eight light-minutes away. Take it this way light travels from the Moon to our eyes in about 1 second. Essentially, it is the distance that light travels in the course of a year, and it is a measurement of both time and distance. You might have heard about the term light-year. In theory, it might be possible, but we still have much to learn. One thing is clear, space itself is not susceptible to our current laws, and our current understanding of the universe dictates that space itself is moving faster than the speed of light. Some propose that a spaceship that could fold a space-time bubble around itself could exceed the speed of light. However, many still believe that the idea of warp speed is possible, and one day in the future, usable. Thus nothing can reach the speed of light, as the theory states.
At the speed of light, such an object would have infinite mass, while its length would be rendered 0 – or an impossibility. If we take Einstein’s theory of general relativity into account, an object’s mass increases as it moves faster while its length contracts. Something as warp speed may be possible however, the practicality of traveling faster than the speed of light renders the idea pretty farfetched. Fantasizing about moving faster than the speed of light is quite common in SCI-FI shows such as Star Trek. Whenever someone puts a limit on something, we tend to want to break that limit somehow. The light which travels through Earth’s atmosphere moves as fast as light in a vacuum, while light passing through a diamond is slowed to less than half that speed.
In a vacuum, nothing can outpace light however, if a region contains matter, even the tiniest bits of it such as dust, light can bend when it comes in contact and results in a decrease in speed. Like sound, light travels in waves and can be slowed depending on what it is moving through. The speed of light isn’t necessarily constant Though we haven’t reached the speed of light, here are some interesting facts about it. It is how telescopes work since most celestial objects are so far away from us we actually see them in the past. As measurements of these wave-like particles became more precise, we now understand that the speed of light is a theoretical limit.Ĭurrently, we know that light-speed is unreachable by anything with mass. Light is a type of energy, and early scientists believed that it must have traveled instantaneously, unaware of its motion. If you’d have the power to move with the speed of light, you could go around the Earth 7.5 times in one second. We know that nothing can surpass the speed of light, at least in theory.
The speed of light’s exact value is defined as 299.792.458 meters per second or approximately 300.000 km / 186.000 mi per second in a vacuum.
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