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.
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.
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.
Time taken: 93,000,000/186,000 = 500 seconds or about 8 minutes
The speed of light in a vacuum is approximately 670,616,629 miles per hour.
The speed of light in a vacuum is 186,282.397 miles per second or 670,616,629.2 miles per hour.
We don't know what "hour second" means, and have a nagging suspicion that it's quite meaningless. In vacuum, the speed of light is roughly -- 186,282 miles per second -- 670,615,200 miles per hour -- 16,094,764,800 miles per day -- 112,663,353,600 miles per week -- 5,878,715,206,000 miles per year.
The speed of light in water is approximately 1.34 x 10^8 miles per hour.
The sun's light has a speed of 186,000 miles per second.
186000 miles per hour
186000 miles per second
No, the speed of light is 186,282.4 miles per second. The speed of sound at sea level is about 0.2114 miles per second.
The speed of light isn't a distance so it has no length it is a measure of speed, which is roughly 186000 miles per second.
That is a common estimate of the speed of light in vacuum.
No known vehicle travels at the speed of light.
Consult Maxwell's Equations. It is derived from electrical and magnetic constants.
Light travels at 186000 miles per second in vacuum.
Light waves in space travel at about 186,282 miles per second or approximately 300,000 kilometers per second. This speed is constant and is known as the speed of light in a vacuum.
The expected speed of light fell out of James Clerk-Maxwell's equations, before it was measured and confirmed.
Yes, light travels at 186,282.4 miles per second in a vacuum.