The speed of Light

Agustín Colón Ortiz

We all know that light is the fastest thing there is in our universe. Light travels at approximately 299,792,458 m/s if it could circle the earth it would circle it about seven times in one second. The first to conclude light-speed was “fast” was Galileo in the 1600. Te fist to true measure of light-speed came in 1676 by some one named Olaf Roemer. Olaf noted that the time elapsed between eclipses of Jupiter with its moons became shorter as the Earth moved closer to Jupiter and became longer as the Earth and Jupiter drew apart. With this data he calculated that the speed of light was something like 2.14 x 10^8 which is rather close considering the lack of technology he had at that time. 

The speed of light is one of the most important limits in the universe. The seed of light makes our world function perfectly. One of the benefitial effects of the speed of light be as fast as it is, is that when it comes to our daily life s fast as it is that what you are really seeing there is no delay time. For example when you turn on a light-bulb we can see we can see it right away in other words anything that happens around us we can see it right away. One of many interesting and we could say curious things about light-speed we can see is when there is a thunderstorm, we see the great speed with which light travels is that you see a flash of lightning instantaneously, but you hear the thunder only later on.

The light is the fastest thing there is when you compare it to us humans. But astronomically it proves quite slow. An interesting piece of data I read in an article said, when man first landed on the moon light proved to be frustratingly slow. When it came time to talk to the astronauts there was a delay of 1.3 seconds when mission control at NASA talked to the astronauts and they received the message, and another 1.3 seconds for the reply of the astronauts to come back down so it was a total of 2.6 seconds of delay and these waves were all traveling at light-speed. That distance is nothing compared to other things in this universe, it is said that light from the sun takes an estimated time of about eight minutes to reach the earth. Let’s now imagine that if the sun were to disappear, that means it would take about eight minutes to feel its effects here on earth, no light and probably a shock wave. 

Astronomically the speed of light is measured in light years is six trillion miles (6,000,000,000,000). Depending were an object in space is we are actually watching its past, for example the brightest star in our sky is Sirius also called the “dog star” is approximately 8.6 LY away which means from our point of view in the present, we are watching this star 8.6 years in the past. That means this star could explode right now and we might not see the effects until 8.6 years later. It is very amusing to think because it takes time to travel we are able to look back in time. The further we look in distance the further back we look. This also makes space travel more difficult, because we cannot travel at light-speed we cannot travel thru space fast enough and it would take probably a persons whole life just to get to another galaxy. I do personally hope that a break through is made in this field so that we can explore all the wonders of the universe, because Light-speed or the speed of light is one of the many wonders of the universe.