Oh That Speed Of Light Mumbo Jumbo.....

-
I am an electrical engineer by trade and had my share of science and physics classes over the years. The one thing that has always fascinated me is light and more specifically the speed of light. Now how fast is that? 3x10^8 m/sec (671,000,000 MPH). Yes that 671 million miles per hour! We rely on this fact for our every day lives whether we know it or not. Our communications from internet, cell phones, TV, and even radio would be pretty terrible if it weren't for that super fast speed.  We have gotten so used to technology, but do we really appreciate this universal constant called the speed of light? So I thought I would dedicate a post to the wonder of light/information and it's speed!




So How Fast Is The Speed Of Light Really?
Going 671 million MPH is no small feat.  That number is considering a vacuum (no air), but lets say you could accomplish it, what would you be able to do?!  Well for starters that equates to ~186k miles per second.  Man made space crafts travel typically around 18k miles per hour.  So we have a ways to go to achieve this goal!  It takes the shuttle roughly 3 days to get to the moon even going this fast.  Where the speed of light can do it in just over 1 second.

To give an idea of how fast that is and how big our universe is, below are some destinations and the time going the speed of light to get there.

  • You could go around the earth 7.5 times in 1 second
  • The Earth to the Moon: 1.255 seconds
  • The Sun to Earth: 8.3 minutes
  • Our Sun to the next closest star: 4.24 years
  • Across our Milky Way galaxy: 100,000 years
  • To the closest spiral galaxy (Andromeda): 2.5 million years
  • Limit of the observable universe to Earth: 13.8 billion years



From our tin can string phones we made as kids to modern cell phones, we have come a long ways!  This is the reason that when you pick up your cell phone and call your family or friends, it's almost instant.  On earth speed of light is reduced due to air, copper wires and circuits, but it is still pretty dang fast.  

When you make a cell call it goes to cell towers, then could be processed by some computer server,  and/or could get bounced off of a satellite and/or go through some cables.  Eventually it makes it to the other end in what seems instantly.  What a miracle!  I am honestly amazed stuff actually works, even as an engineer!




Relativity And Time Travel
One of the coolest things about the speed of light is the closer you get to it, the slower time goes until it even stops.  In theory, if you can go faster than the speed of light  you could go back in time.  The closest star as shown above is ~4 light years (distance light can go in one year).  So that star is pretty dang far away if it takes light 4 years to get there.  2.35x 10^13 miles to be exact, that's way over trillions of miles... But if you could travel the speed of light to that star and back, to you it would seem like the snap of a finger, but for the rest of us, almost 9 years would have passed!




Problem with going the speed of light is that the closer you get the heavier you become or I should say the bigger your mass becomes. If your mass increases, so does then energy needed to move it. So until we find some infinite source of power we won't be getting there any time soon.


Looking Back In Time
As fast as light may be, all the light we see in the sky from stars, our moon and sun is actually old light.  As discussed the light from the sun takes ~8 mins to get to earth.  So we are seeing the sun as it was 8 mins ago.  In other-words if it decided to blow up suddenly, we wouldn't know for 8 mins...  

Let that sink in...!

#RookieGuru
#GiveMeMore

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Flashback Friday - 1869 Transcontinental Railroad Completed

-
Image
On May 10th, 1869, the race to complete the great transcontinental railroad came to an end with a golden spike.  In three long and difficult years, the two companies, Union Pacific and Central Pacific laid nearly 2000 miles of track ultimately meeting in Promontory, Utah. It was known there was a need for this railroad since 1832, but challenges arose in congressional funding and the civil war.  In 1853, congress finally approved funds to survey the land.  However, with the rising tensions from the North and South, progress was slow going.  It wasn't until 1862, one year into the civil war that a Republican-controlled Congress passed the Pacific Railroad Act, which guaranteed public land grants and loans to the Union Pacific and the Central Pacific railroad companies. In 1866, construction finally began, but was not without it challenges.  Terrible weather, long harsh work hours, Indian raids and getting over/through the Sierra Nevada mountains are just a few of the hardship
Read more

Flashback Friday - 1962: 1st US Spacecraft Fly-By Of Another Planet (Venus)

-
Image
On this day December 14th 1962, a US made spacecraft called the Mariner 2 had finally arrived at it's long awaited destination Venus.  The Mariner 2 had launched on August 27th 1962, so it took just a little over 3 months to arrive. Before the Mariner 2 was successful, the Mariner 1 had to be self detonated only 5 mins after takeoff (July 22, 1962) due to it veering off course from a SW glitch.  They were able to correct that issue in the code and use other learnings to make Mariner 2 a success.  Although there were a few hiccups and course corrections through it's flight to Venus, it was able to recover from all of them and hit its mark. The Mariner 2 arrived at Venus on December 14th 1962 and began capturing data with its on-board instruments.  Weighing 40 lbs, here are the instruments it was equipped with: Microwave radiometer Infrared radiometer Three axis fluxgate magnetometer Cosmic ray detector Cosmic dust detector Solar plasma spectrometer Particle detect
Read more

Flashback Friday - 1838 First Public Demonstration Of The Telegraph

-
Image
Today, is an endless vortex of communications.  We have land lines, fax machines, cell phones, texting, Skype, Facetime, satellites and streaming media to name a few.  But it all started with some wire and an idea.  Almost 200 years ago Samuel Morse gave his first public demonstration of the telegraph on January 11th 1838. Source: Wikipedia Samuel Morse invented and patented the Telegraph in 1837.  He came up with the concept and code known as Morse Code to be able to send messages over a wire with electricity.  He encoded the alphabet and numbers with dots and dashes that could then be sent with one telegraph key and received by another. Source: Wikipedia This was the first method of communication that was instantly received on the other side.  Before this invention all communications came by letter or messenger.  On this day in 1838, Morse demonstrated his invention at Speedwell Ironworks close to Morristown NJ.  He sent a message over 2 miles of wire to the amazeme
Read more