According to our present knowledge of movement, the speed of light appears to be the fastest of all, 874,030 times faster than the speed of sound.
The speed of sound is about 343 meters per second, whereas the speed of light is 299,792,458 meters per second. The speed of light is about 670,616,629 miles per hour, whereas it travels at 1,079,252,848 kilometers per hour.
In a vacuum, light travels at around 300,000 kilometers per second or 186,000 miles per second. In water, the speed of light is 225,000 kilometers per second, compared to 200,000 kilometers per second in the glass.
Nothing seems to be quicker than the speed of light!
If you want an idea of how fast the speed of light is, consider that if we launched a spaceship from Earth that traveled at 153,454 miles per hour (or 246,960 kilometers per hour) continuously, it would reach the Sun in 606 hours, or 25 days.
If our spaceship were flying at the speed of light, however, we would reach the Sun in just 8.3 minutes. If you could move at the speed of light, you could circumnavigate the Earth seven and a half times in one second.
Theoretically, it would seem that nothing is quicker than the speed of light, but is this true? Let’s find out.
Einstein’s Theory of the Speed of Light
According to the theory of special relativity developed by the scientist Albert Einstein, which forms the foundation for a significant portion of contemporary physics, there is nothing in the universe that can move faster than light.
According to this hypothesis, the mass of a piece of substance expands to infinity as it gets closer and closer to the speed of light. This indicates that the speed of light serves as a speed restriction over the whole of the cosmos.
According to the United States National Institute of Standards and Technology, the speed of light is so unchanging that it is used to determine international standard measures like the meter (and by extension, the mile, the foot, and the inch).
It also contributes to the definition of the kg and the temperature unit known as the Kelvin via the use of some devious formulae. However, despite the widespread belief that the speed of light is the only constant in the universe, scientists and authors of science fiction devote much thought to the possibility of traveling at speeds greater than that of light.
Our collective progress toward new tales, new technologies, and new worlds of physics has not been hampered by the fact that no one has been able to show a true warp drive as of yet. Nonetheless, this has not stopped our progress.
Is There Something That Can Travel at a Speed Greater Than the Speed of Light?
If anything ever managed to travel at the speed of light, it would have a limitless amount of mass. As a consequence of this, the amount of energy needed to move the item would likewise become limitless, which is obviously impossible.
If we base our knowledge of physics on the theory of special relativity, as the majority of contemporary scientists do, this implies that the speed of light is the unchangeable speed limit of our world; it is the quickest that anything can go.
It would seem that there is nothing that can go faster than the speed of light. However, the universe, as it always has, continues to escape the human perspective.
Scientists have shown that the universe is expanding at a pace that is even greater than the speed of light. This expansion is taking place everywhere over the cosmos.
Immunity to the laws of physics
Because space is conceptual “nothing,” it is immune to the constraints imposed by the physical laws of the universe. If you were to run while holding a torch, the pace at which its light would travel would not change even though you would be moving faster.
Because space itself is traveling together with these galaxies, some of them are traveling away from our Milky Way faster than the speed of light. This is because space itself is drifting away from them at the same time.
Time portal travel would be the most effective method of transportation if there were something that could improve upon the efficiency of traveling at the speed of light.
Wormholes
Wormholes are just a concept at this point, but their workings are really fascinating, and in some sense, if they existed, they would theoretically be able to travel at a speed greater than that of light.
This is due to the fact that a wormhole links two locations that are very far apart. If you were to go from point A to point B via a wormhole, regardless of the distance between the two locations, you would arrive at your destination very quickly.
If you could travel faster than the speed of light, what do you think would happen?
According to the theory of special relativity, nothing should be able to travel faster than the speed of light, and if anything is able to achieve this feat, it will cause the time to flow in the other direction.
It is possible that traveling faster than the speed of light would involve traveling through time. However, if this were to be the case, it would be equivalent to achieving immortality in some respects because nothing could have an effect on you, not even the passage of time.
This is especially the case if, hypothetically speaking, you would not even be subjected to the impacts of the things that you would travel through.
Our knowledge of light speed is quite limited at the moment, and our grasp of how to exceed it is much more limited. With the technology that we have available right now, our species has only just begun to approach a very tiny fraction of the speed of light.
We haven’t even reached the midway point yet!
Frequently Asked Questions
How fast is the speed of light in mph?
The speed of light is 671 million miles per hour (mph).
How fast is the speed of light in km/s?
The speed of light, “c” is equal to 300,000 kilometers per second
How fast is the speed of light in m/s?
The speed of light, “c” is exactly equal to 299,792,458 meters per second.
How fast is the light speed in miles?
It can reach the speed limit of 186,000 miles per second.
Conclusion
In 1905, Albert Einstein made a fundamental discovery on the nature of light, which may be summed up in a remark that seems to be deceptively simple: There is never any change in the speed of light.
Surprisingly, the answer has nothing to do with the real speed of light, which is around 300,000 kilometers per second (186,000 miles per second) while traveling through the “vacuum” of empty space.
Instead, Einstein came to an unexpected and contradictory realization: the speed of light coming from a moving source is the same as the speed of light coming from a source that is stationary.
For instance, beams of light emanating from a lighthouse, from the headlights of a moving automobile, and from the lights on a supersonic aircraft all travel at the same rate as measured by any observer, in spite of disparities in the rates at which the respective sources of these beams travel.