Why is the speed of light 186000 miles per sec?

Answer 1

That's just the way it works out. _________________ In cases like this, the question "why" isn't the best question. It is interesting to note that the speed you mention is the speed of light in a vacuum. And although light doesn't need a medium through which to travel, it can be slowed down depending on what it's traveling through. If projected through a Bose-Einstein condensate, it can be slowed to the point of something on the order of tens or hundreds of meters per second. But the most amazing thing is that in a vacuum, any observer from any point of view, in any frame of reference, will observe the light and clock it at 186000 miles per second, another reason why 'why' becomes literally unanswerable. This is a personal thought and not based on any research that I know of. I think that light travels at c, and c is also the velocity of time itself. If we could accelerate to c, we would reach a point where time is not passing for us; we would be motionless in relation to time. As we decelerate, we begin to move relative to time and we experience time passing. Or perhaps, somehow, we are the ones moving at c, giving us the experience of time passing (because we are passing through it), and what we cannot do is 'slow down to a stop' by accelerating in the other direction.

Answer 2

It doesn't!

Light travels at 186,000 miles per second.

The light from a flash of lightning will travel at the speed of light in air. But the lightning itself is travelling nowhere near as fast. It an electrical discharge, and is bound by the laws of physics. Its speed depends the on many factors, including the conductivity of the medium it is travelling through. Careful scientific measurements of many lightning flashes show that the electricity moves at different speeds at different stages of its journey. Also, its returning upstroke is much faster than its downstroke. The Guinness Book of Answers indicates a maximum speeds around 87,000 miles per second.

The USA Department of Energy gives the speed of lightning as 93,000 miles per second. For more information see Related links below this box.

Answer 3

De speed of light shows up as a coefficient in the solution of the wave equation that

you get when you do all the right things with Maxwell's four electrical equations.

There was a time when I could do all that, but too much watta has gone unda de

bridge since den, and maybe it's betta that I don't try to go into too much detail.

The point is that you can stay inside at your desk, with the shades closed, and do nothing

but derive the theoretical wave equation on paper with math, and when you do that, you

get a number in the wave equation that tells the speed of the waves. The number is made

up of the electric permittivity of free space and the magnetic permeability of free space.

These are both pretty easy to measure ... a lot easier than measuring the speed of light.

They're properties of space, and when you know both of them, you crank them into this

number in your wave equation, and you get a speed for these waves that you pulled out

with your math.

According to your math, this should be the speed of light, and many years later, when

Physicists develop the ability to go out and measure the speed of light, it turns out to be

just what you derived in your dark room with your math, without ever going outside.

Why is it what it is ? Same reason your car goes 75 when you stomp it, and not 25 or 150.

That's the speed that comes out of the way the gas feeds the carburetor, plus the way

the valves are adjusted, plus the shape of the cams, the weight of the flywheel, and the

gearing in the tranny. All the parts that go together to make the machine run, that's how

they run.

Answer 4

The speed of light is 186,000 miles per second because that is the speed at which light travels in a vacuum. This constant speed of light was determined through experiments and is a fundamental constant in physics.

Answer 5

Using miles per second as the unit, that is the (approximate) value. 186000 miles/sec would be a little closer. Speed of light is a constant.

Answer 6

It takes light a little under a second (0.9985 seconds) to travel 186000 miles.

(Light travels at a speed of 186282 miles per second.)

Answer 7

When it is moving through a vacuum.

Answer 8

no