Tag Archives: speed of light

Can We Travel Faster Than the Speed of Light (like in Star Wars)?

Posted on January 30, 2022 by josephmaquino9

One interesting question that has crossed many minds is, “Can humans travel at the speed of light?” Movies like Star Wars and Star Trek seem to believe that we can travel at, or even exceed, the speed of light (300,000,000 m/s) as they depict spaceships capable of jumping into hyperspace. In order to assess this […] Continue reading →

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The Speed of Light (or so we think)

Posted on January 29, 2022 by Karan Bhardwaj

To measure the speed of anything, the simplest thing to do is to measure how long it takes to travel a known distance. By dividing the distance over the time, we obtain the speed: Speed = Distance / Time However, measuring the speed of light is not so easy. Colloquially known as about 3 x […] Continue reading →

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Blog 1: Special Theory of Relativity

Posted on February 13, 2017 by vandyastro

Before discussion the Special Theory of Relativity. Two observations must be understood; one that the speed of light is constant and two one cannot distinguish a state of rest from a state of constant velocity. The idea that the speed of light is constant has never been truly proven, but can be verified with experimentation. […] Continue reading →

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Light from the Past

Posted on February 2, 2017 by joneastr

Although light travels through space at the fastest speed physically possible (no object with mass can reach the speed of … More Continue reading →

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Cherenkov Radiation

Posted on January 18, 2017 by Haley Topper

This is the excerpt for your very first post. Continue reading →

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The Speed of Light

Posted on January 26, 2016 by podolakvandysolarsystem

The speed of light is very, very fast, almost incomprehensibly fast. It is unusual to think that whenever we see an object, light is bouncing off that object and hitting our eye. We perceive this to be instantaneous, but it actually takes some infinitesimal amount of time for light to travel from nearby objects to […] Continue reading →

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The Speed of Light

Posted on January 26, 2016 by podolakvandysolarsystem

The speed of light is very, very fast, almost incomprehensibly fast. It is unusual to think that whenever we see an object, light is bouncing off that object and hitting our eye. We perceive this to be instantaneous, but it actually takes some infinitesimal amount of time for light to travel from nearby objects to […] 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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So, is a light-year some kind of diet plan or whatever? The speed of light and space

Posted on January 23, 2016 by d51blog

To answer the titular question in a word: no. So then, what exactly is a light-year and what does it have to do with the speed of light? A light-year is the amount of distance that a given light wave (light, radio waves, X-rays) travels in a year. Because the speed of light is approximately 300,000 meters per second, […] Continue reading →

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Speed of Light and Time

Posted on January 24, 2015 by alephnulluniverse

After 6 months, astronauts in the International Space Station would have aged about 0.007 seconds less that people on Earth. This is due to the International Space Station moving much faster than the Earth. Time itself will bend due to differences in gravity or velocity. Now what if an object starts to move close to […] Continue reading →

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