Category Archives: Light

Light Travel: The “New” Hyperspace

Posted on January 26, 2016 by evinske

We’ve read it in our beloved science fiction books. Superheroes and intelligent beings from other worlds harness massive amounts of energy and cross through different dimensions – traveling faster than the speed of light. It’s the kind of thing space-obsessed kids (and adults, alike) dream about. We dedicate movies, like “2001: A Space Odyssey,” directed […] Continue reading →

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Consequences of a Constant Speed of Light

Posted on January 26, 2016 by 2016spaceodyssey

I find it fascinating that what we see in the night sky is an image from the past.  Since nothing moves faster than the speed of light it is impossible to know what is going on at this exact moment on places other than the Earth and the Moon.  Hypothetically, the Sun could suddenly explode […] Continue reading →

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Consequences of a Constant Speed of Light

Posted on January 26, 2016 by 2016spaceodyssey

I find it fascinating that what we see in the night sky is an image from the past.  Since nothing moves faster than the speed of light it is impossible to know what is going on at this exact moment on places other than the Earth and the Moon.  Hypothetically, the Sun could suddenly explode […] Continue reading →

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Lightspeed, Cosmic speedlimits, and Looking into the Past (Part 1)

Posted on January 26, 2016 by harperastronomyblog

In my last post, I made it a point to say that I would try to keep my blog interesting. In light of that decision (I didn’t even notice this pun until I already had this entire post typed up, so this one’s not on me), and because the winter makes me long for the […] Continue reading →

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The Speed Limit of the Universe

Posted on January 25, 2016 by samihahplanet

58,536 km/h. That’s the speed of the fastest ever man-made vehicle: the New Horizons space probe. Though this may seem like an unfathomable feat to the layperson, there’s something that can travel even faster than that by five orders of magnitude. Light is the current “speed limit of the universe.” It travels at 3 x 108  m/s or 1 […] Continue reading →

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One Long Trip

Posted on January 25, 2016 by chasejaeger

When we look up at the sky during the night, it can feel comforting that instead of being surrounded by darkness, we see the bright twinkles of stars all around us. Though this might make us feel like we are not simply on a rocky planet hurtling through space far from everything else, this is not […] Continue reading →

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Blog #2 – Midnight Sun

Posted on January 25, 2016 by martisnv

Every morning the sun rises on the Eastern horizon, and every evening the sun sets in the West. I have seen approximately 7800 of these sunrises and sunsets over the course of my life. Every night I go to bed in the dark, … Continue reading → Continue reading →

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Blog #2 – Midnight Sun

Posted on January 25, 2016 by martisnv

Every morning the sun rises on the Eastern horizon, and every evening the sun sets in the West. I have seen approximately 7800 of these sunrises and sunsets over the course of my life. Every night I go to bed in the dark, … Continue reading → Continue reading →

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Consequences of breaking the speed limit

Posted on January 25, 2016 by OscarBen

The effects of aberration and the Doppler Effect. Source: Comic Vine During one of the first class sessions, we were given a minute or so to write down what would happen if the speed of light was only 100 mph. I’d never really thought about this before, so I struggled to get anything more than “The… More Consequences of breaking the speed limit Continue reading →

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Ahead Warp Factor One

Posted on January 25, 2016 by impossibleensign

People love to speculate about faster than light travel, but how did we come to know the speed of light? Continue reading →

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