• News
  • Film and TV
  • Music
  • Tech
  • Features
  • Celebrity
  • Politics
  • Weird
  • Community
  • Advertise
  • Terms
  • Privacy & Cookies
  • LADbible Group
  • LADbible
  • SPORTbible
  • GAMINGbible
  • Tyla
  • UNILAD Tech
  • FOODbible
  • License Our Content
  • About Us & Contact
  • Jobs
  • Latest
  • Topics A-Z
  • Authors
Facebook
Instagram
X
Threads
TikTok
YouTube
Submit Your Content
Video demonstrating the speed of light is blowing people’s minds

Home> News

Published 15:47 27 Oct 2023 GMT+1

Video demonstrating the speed of light is blowing people’s minds

A video demonstrating the speed of light that went viral earlier this year is still blowing people's minds to this day.

Kit Roberts

Kit Roberts

I think we've all come accustomed to the fact that light can travel pretty quickly, but how fast exactly?

For come context, light from the Sun takes just over eight minutes to travel the 148 million kilometers to Earth, and it manages the 4.5 billion km to the furthest planet in our solar system, Neptune, in a little over four hours.

Pretty speedy, then.

Advert

If you wanted those kind of speeds visualised, an Instagram account has demonstrated just how fast the speed of light is.

Check it out below:

The video has shows just how quick the speed of light actually is, by superimposing it over Earth and our solar system, and the results are pretty impressive.

Something travelling at the speed of light in a vacuum around Earth would complete around 7.5 orbits per second at the Earth's surface.

Advert

That's a pretty astonishing fact.

But, because space is so huge, when we look at the stars we're looking years into the past as the light can take so long to reach us.

Light can travel pretty fast.
Instagram/@nowspacetime

For instance, we see the bright star Sirius not as it is now, but how it was 8.6 years in the past because it's so far away.

Advert

While many things can travel at the speed of light, nothing that we currently know of travels faster than it.

So it's quite useful as a way to measure things, because nothing can possibly travel faster than that.

In response to the video, one person joked: "Light is slow AF."

Another said: "This video explanation of light speed may not be the hero we want, but it’s definitely the hero we need."

Advert

Meanwhile, a third penned: "Space blows my mind."

But just how fast is the speed of light?

The video shows the speed of light.
Instagram/@nowspacetime

Well on paper it's 299,792,458 metres per second.

Advert

To put that in perspective, in miles per hour that 671 million miles per hour, or 186,000 miles per second.

In short, it's quite fast. So fast that to the human eye it doesn't even register as travelling.

Confusingly, light itself doesn't always travel at the 'speed of light'.

Things can get in the way of it and hamper its movement. It's even possible in physics to slow light down so much that we can actually see it moving with the naked eye by directing a laser through extremely cold sodium atoms.

Advert

The speed of light that we all know and love is actually the speed of light in a vacuum, completely unhampered and undeterred.

Featured Image Credit: Instagram/@nowspacetime

Topics: News, Science, Space, World News

Kit Roberts
Kit Roberts

Kit joined UNILAD in 2023 as a community journalist. They have previously worked for StokeonTrentLive, the Daily Mirror, and the Daily Star.

Advert

Advert

Advert

Choose your content:

5 hours ago
7 hours ago
  • 5 hours ago

    Ex-pilot of B-2 stealth bomber reveals disturbing truth of going to toilet on 44-hour mission

    Air Force colonel Melvin Deaile had to go for a wee every 60 minutes

    News
  • 5 hours ago

    People left stunned as woman breaks down exactly how much it costs to give birth in America

    You could put deposits down on several houses for that!

    News
  • 7 hours ago

    Doctor gives 'deeply concerning' warning after man injected himself with sperm to 'cure back pain'

    A man self-medicated by injecting himself with his own semen to 'cure' his back pain

    News
  • 7 hours ago

    Rosie O’Donnell issues scathing response to all the celebrities who attended Jeff Bezos’ $56,000,000 wedding

    "Seeing all these billionaires gathering in the gross excess of it all. The show of it," she wrote on Instagram.

    Celebrity
  • Apocalyptic video shows what would happen if a needle hit Earth at the speed of light
  • First-ever test for laser beam weapon sees it destroy target at the speed of light
  • Scientist claims to have evidence 'our entire universe is trapped inside a black hole'
  • Astronomers have discovered ‘strongest’ evidence that Planet Nine is really in the solar system