The Speed of Light is EXTREMELY Slow

Subtitles

The speed of light is exactly

670,616,629 miles per hour

or 299,792,458 meters per second

and is believed to be the

fastest speed in the Universe.

To put that into perspective,

light can travel around the entire

Earth over 7 times in just one second!

But that's actually quite slow.

It only appears fast to us since we're

just a microscopic dot in

an infinitely large Universe.

Let's look at the speed of light from

a much larger perspective, although first

we need to understand a few

things about light.

Light was the first thing

created in the Universe but

what is light made of?

Light is electromagnetic radiation.

However, most people will connect the

term light with visible light which is

what your eyes are sensitive to,

but visible light is only a very small

portion of the electromagnetic spectrum.

Besides visible light, the electromagnetic

spectrum also includes Gamma Rays,

X-Rays,

Ultraviolet,

Infrared,

Microwaves,

and Radio Waves.

The wavelength of light is what

determines it's category,

or in the case of visible light,

it's color.

But what is electromagnetic radiation?

Electromagnetic radiation, or light, is

propagated by small particles known as Photons.

Since light is actually a physical object,

or more accurately,

billions of tiny physical objects,

light does actually apply force to

any object it hits.

However, since light is so, well...light,

this doesn't have much of an effect on a

large scale. So, no,

you can't put a laser pointer under

your car in place of a jack.

Unlike other sections of the

electromagnetic spectrum which are

most often observed in black and white,

visible light is observed in a whole

variety of colors. The best demonstration

of this is the rainbow.

Although most people think there's 7 colors

in the rainbow, there's actually much more.

What we observe as colors are actually

just different wavelengths of visible light.

So red, is the longest visible wavelength

and violet is the shortest visible wavelength.

And, of course, there's more then just

7 wavelengths in between those two.

The primary colors of light are often

confused with the primary colors of ink.

While the primary colors of ink are

cyan, magenta, and yellow,

the primary colors of light are

red, green, and blue.

In fact, magenta doesn't actually exist

anywhere on the electromagnetic spectrum,

magenta is actually a combination of

the shortest and longest ends

of the spectrum.

While I could go on forever about

what exactly light is and how it works,

we should probably move on.

How does the speed of light compare

to the speed of sound?

The best representation of just

how much faster the speed of light is

compared to the speed of sound

is seen every time there's a thunderstorm.

When you see a flash of lightning that's say

10 miles in the distance, you see it just

54 microseconds or 0.00005 seconds

after it actually happened.

Yet the thunder, or sound, takes

over 47 seconds.

That's nearly 1 million times

slower than light!

So if light is so much faster than sound,

then how is the speed of light so slow?

Well, because we've just been looking at

what happens on our own tiny planet,

there's still a whole Universe out there!

And when the speed of light is compared

to the whole Universe,

it becomes a snails pace.

Let's board a newly invented spacecraft

that is capable of traveling at

the speed of light.

We'll call it the EMR-c,

short for ElectroMagnetic Radiation and c

which is commonly used to represent

the speed of light.

We'll start on Earth and begin exploring

the rest of the Universe.

We should probably do a quick flight

around the Earth first, just to make sure

all our systems are working correctly.

Uh...

That was pretty quick.

About 0.134 seconds to make that flight.

Anyway, it looks like the systems are

working fine so let's head to the Sun next.

It's our closest neighbouring star,

so this shouldn't take very long.

Ok, this is taking a while,

let's fast forward a bit.

And...

We've arrived.

According to our clock, that took

a little under 8 minutes and 20 seconds.

Let's zero out our stopwatch here,

and compare everything to their

distance from the Sun.

Alright, let's head to the orbit of Neptune.

We just went from the Earth to

the Sun in a few minutes, so

this shouldn't take too long.

Let's fast forward a bit.

Ok, I guess I was wrong again.

It's already been an hour and we still

haven't reached Neptune.

I guess we'll have to fast forward even more.

Well, that was the most boring ride of my life!

Over 4 hours and we've finally reached

the orbit of Neptune!

Alright, let's head to Proxima Centauri,

our second closest neighbouring star.

It's quite a ways away, so it will take

at least a few months to get there.

Welp, it's been a year and we're still

not there.

I guess we'll have to fast forward

even more!

And, we've arrived.

That took about 4 years and 3 months!

I'm beginning to think this tour is gonna

take a bit longer than expected.

Let's take a trip to Sirius,

the brightest star in the sky.

Other then the Sun, that is.

Well, here we are.

Looks like that took us about

8 years and 8 months.

Crazy that we were still traveling at

the same speed that allowed us to

fly around the Earth in less than

one eighth of a second!

Anyway, let's continue our journey.

Looks like our next stop is Rigel.

I think it's quite a ways away so

let's switch to our engines that can

propel us at 100 times the

speed of light!

I know we're going at 100 times

the speed of light, but

this seems like it's taking a very long time.

I think we're going to have to

fast forward quite a bit.

Ok, that's Rigel.

It took us 8 years and nearly 8 months

to get here at 100 times the speed of light!

The worst part is, we're not even

close to the edge of our own galaxy!

So, let's travel to the edge of our galaxy.

Let's switch engines again.

This time, we'll travel at 10 thousand times

the speed of light!

And here we are!

The edge of the Milky Way galaxy!

It took us 2 and a half years to travel here.

And believe it or not, that was only

about one quarter of the distance

across the entire Milky Way!

Alright, it's time we see just how slow

the speed of light really is.

This time, we're going to switch our

engines to 1 billion times the speed of light,

which is over 186 trillion miles per hour!

Let's use this new speed to travel in

a circle around the entire observable Universe.

I hope you're ready for a very,

very, long journey.

It's now been a century!

But we're not even half done, so...

you might want to take up knitting or something.

Alright! We've now finished our trip around

the entire observable Universe.

It's been nearly 300 years.

Let's switch our clock back to light-years so

we can better compare to traveling

around the Earth.

Wait?! What's that number?

Oh, yeah,

we were traveling at 1 billion times

the speed of light.

Remember how the speed of light when

compared to the Universe becomes a

snails pace?

Well, a snail could travel around the

entire orbit of Neptune over 3000 times

before light could travel around

the observable Universe, once!

So, either the speed of light is

extremely slow

or the Universe is

extremely large.

In fact

it could even be both.