How Fast Does Light Travel

How fast light travels between earth and the moon.

How fast does light travel. The fact that scientists still have different ideas about how light travels shows you that is is very complicated. We know that light has a finite speed and it travels at the speed of 300 000 kilometers per second. As an object approaches the speed of light its mass rises precipitously. The speed of light in vacuum commonly denoted c is a universal physical constant important in many areas of physics its exact value is defined as 299 792 458 metres per second approximately 300 000 km s or 186 000 mi s it is exact because by international agreement a metre is defined as the length of the path travelled by light in vacuum during a time interval of 1 299 792 458 second.

What that means is that it is an oscillating electric and magnetic field. And the speed of light is no exception. What they can all agree on is that it travels very fast and it shows the. The speed of light in a vacuum is 186 282 miles per second 299 792 kilometers per second and in theory nothing can travel faster than light.

But in science if you make a hard and fast rule someone will try to disprove it or at least find a loophole. Light in a vacuum travels at approximately 299 792 kilometers per second 186 282 miles per second. If an object tries to travel 186 000 miles per second its mass becomes infinite and so does the energy required to move it. A second animation by o donoghue takes a big step back from earth to include the moon.

For this reason no normal object can travel as fast or faster than the speed of light. So how fast does light travel. In september 2011 physicists working on the oscillation project with emulsion tracking. What is light and why does it travel so fast.

Light travels at exactly 299 792 458 meters per second in a vacuum about 300 000 kilometers per second or just over 1 billion kilometers per hour. Light is an electromagnetic wave.