For Karen in Vermont, you are up early this morning. It is easier for us to express distance in light years Karen, as most people are familiar with the term. In answer to your question, light travels at 186,282.4 miles in one second in the free vacuum of space. So if you multiply this number by 60 seconds then light travels 11,176,944 miles in one minute, multiply by 60 minutes, light will travel 670,616,640 miles in one hour. Multiply the latter number by 8,760 hours (one Earth year, 365 days), then light travels 5.87 trillion miles in one Earth year, which is now called a Light-Year. Because the speed is so fast it is often offered at 186,000 miles per second. Visual light is a very small part of the Electromagnetic Spectrum (EM). Electricity is also a member of the EM and travels at the same speed as light, most of the time. If you have ever watched a movie where it depicts restoring the power to a city, all the lights in homes and buildings come on at once, that is because electricity is travelling at 148,000 miles per second, it is slowed by the resistance in the electrical circuitry. Radio signals travel at light-speed. When you are in your car listening to the radio, the signal from the transmission tower is coming to you at the speed of light. You however are hearing the music at the speed of sound, 761 miles per hour ( Mach 1). As you are only a few feet away from the speakers you hear the sound immediately. A speeder trying to out run the police on a highway has no chance if a roadblock is set up in advance. The speeder may be driving at 150 mph in a very fast sports car but the police have radioed ahead for the roadblock, the radio signal is travelling at light speed. The fast sports car travels 0.0416 miles per second, the radio signal travels 186,000 miles per second. It is very evident who wins.
Posted on: Wed, 14 May 2014 10:02:44 +0000
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