Speed of Light

Light travels at a constant, finite speed of 186,000 mi/sec. A traveler, moving at the speed of light, would circumnavigate the equator approximately 7.5 times in one second. By comparison, a traveler in a jet aircraft, moving at a ground speed of 500 mph, would cross the continental U.S. once in 4 hours.Sunlight takes about 8 minutes 17 seconds to travel the average distance from the surface of the Sun to the Earth.

The speed of light in vacuum, commonly denoted c, is a universal physical constant important in many areas of physics. Its precise value is 299792458 metres per second (approximately 3.00×108 m/s), since the length of the metre is defined from this constant and the international standard for time. According to special relativity, c is the maximum speed at which all matter and hence information in the universe can travel. It is the speed at which all massless particles and changes of the associated fields (including electromagnetic radiation such as light and gravitational waves) travel in vacuum.

See Also:
Radio Waves