Why is light so fast?

Answer 1

I probably won't get picked best answer, but here is the real story, as weird as it sounds.

Everything moves at the speed of light.

Before I explain, let's consider a car traveling 100 mph north. If that car were to start driving toward the north east at the same 100 mph, the cars speed would be divided between driving north and driving east. The car is still traveling at 100 mph, but from the perspective of traveling north, it's moving slower.

Einstein's concept of spacetime as an absolute entity requires us to be traveling at the speed of light, but instead of behaving like light, our travel is also divided among the 3 spatial dimensions and the time dimension. Since our speed is divided, we move through the spatial dimensions much slower than light.

Put another way, if you were to stand totall still with respect to spacetime, you would be traveling at the speed of light through time. When you move through space your are diverting some of that speed into moving through space. Light travels in one dimension and not through time, therefore light doesn't age.

I know this is a weird concept, but according to physics it is the universe we live in. We don't see the world this way, because our frame of reference in the spatial dimension is so much slower than the speed of light that we don't notice such things.

I hope this helps!

Answer 2

To know the answer to this, you must understand what light is. The first thing to know is that when an electric field changes, it produces a magnetic field. Also, a changing magnetic field creates an electric field. As you may suspect, a chain reaction can start, an electric field starting a magnetic, which starts another electric and so on. Usually the new electric field is weaker than the first, and the subsequent magnetic field is even weaker, and the process dies off.

What happens sometimes, though, is this propagation happens at just the right speed such that the fields don't "die off;" they maintain their original strength as they move through space. This self propagating wave is called light. It has to go this fast in order to not die out. This is all explained by a set of equations known as Maxwell's equations.

Maxwell's equations, however, do not say what reference frame this speed is measured from. In fact, the speed of light is the same no matter how fast you are going. To explain this, Albert Einstein came along with special relativity. Check it out, a lot of neat stuff is in it.

Answer 3

The speed of light is the conversion constant between space and time.
dr = c dt
You might say that both space and time are ways of separating events. The speed of light is just a way of converting from the scale a rular measures to the scale a clock measures.

The square of the speed of light is the conversion constant between mass and energy.
E = m c^2
Energy and mass are the two different forms of THINGS that exist in spacetime, but they're equivalent to each other, with the square of the speed of light serving to adjust the units from kilograms to Joules.

Also, it is the link between electricity and magnetism.

Also, it determines whether any two events can be associated by cause and effect.

Answer 4

It's due mainly to the fact that photons (light particles) are massless. Thus making them able to travel at a extremely high velocity. The highest velocity in the universe, besides the possible theoretical particles tachyons which were created during the big bang, which are supposed to be able to travel faster than light.

Answer 5

Light is fast relitive to everything else we see... The reason its faster then other things we see is because it has more energy per the mass it has. So if you can find something with less mass and more energy then light you'll probably have found something that travels faster then it.

Answer 6

Nobody knows WHY light is so fast, they just know that it is fast. So fast that is, that no other known object has been proven to go faster.

Answer 7

For all practical purposes the light's speed is infinite and it takes no time to reach a point.

But experiments have proved that its speed is a finite one and is equalt to 3X10^8 m/s.

Thus, actually its speed is limited whereas every one experieces it as infinite speed.

Hence you must ask Why light is slow?

Answer 8

It just is. Probably one of the cool constants to come out of the Big Bang.
Or, if you believe in Intelligent Design of the universe, then someone made it that way.

Answer 9

Pure energy - containing no mass or electrical field to slow it down.
It is the universal speed limit which no mass or matter can ever attain.

Answer 10

because it is so light.