What is it that makes light travel at such high speed?

Answer 1

light has 0 mass. the speed of anything is directly related to its mass. the lower the mass the higher the speed (if the same amount of energy is applied).

so since light has no mass it should go infinitely fast. infinity isnt really real though, it poses some logical problems. lets assume for a second that something travels infinitely fast. how long does it to travel 1 mile? 0 seconds. 2 miles? 0 seconds. so if something traveled infinitely fast it would be everywhere in the universe at on time. thats obviously impossible.

so i like to think of it as the speed of light (300,000,000 meters a second, 186,000 miles a second) as being basically infinite, its the maximum speed of the universe.

Answer 2

Light has no mass. The amount of energy it takes to accelerate a particle depends on the mass of the particle and the speed to accelerate it to. The way the formula works out, as you accelerate, it takes exponentially more energy to continue accelerating. Eventually, after applying an infinite amount of energy, you reach the speed of light (also called C). Since light has no mass, it doesn't matter how much energy you apply to it (the energy in a light wave is directly proportional to its frequency), the light wave will always travel at C. However, spacetime is curved in a gravitational field, and this actually slows the speed of light, so the speed of light is variable. Also, the speed of light changes when passing through a substance, such as air or gas (but it will never go faster than C, the speed it goes in a vacuum). The changing speed of light when it passes through a substance is what causes refraction. The slowest speed I know of occured when they sent a light beam through a bose-einstein condensate of rubidium, they slowed it to 15 mph!

PS Tachyons don't exist, they are not real, if they did exist they would have negative mass, they are just a scientific "what-if"

Answer 3

The speed of light is generally considered a constant and is a property of the medium through which it travels. There is a property called the index of refraction which is the ratio of the speeds of light in the two media, and it relates to just how much a beam of light deflects as it crosses the boundary between those two media. E.g. water and glass. Water and air. Glass and air. Water and kerosene. All of these have refractive abilities at their interfaces.

The speed of light in a vaccuum is different in many ways than the speed of light in other media. In the deepest parts of deep space, there is no "medium" except the emptiness of space itself.

Many authorities say that nothing travels faster than light. But that's not true. There is a particle called a tachyon that does travel faster than light. The catch is, it cannot go SLOWER than the speed of light. It is required by one of those nasty little "symmetry" laws but it goes so fast that we cannot interact with it.

In truth, if you could ever figure out exactly why the speed of light is what it is, you would be a shoo-in for the Nobel Prize in Physics. No arguments, no foolin' around.

Me, I happen to believe that it is an artifact of the nature of space, related to the dimensions and vibratory frequencies of the vibrating strings of string theory. If you found a way to change the string vibrations, the speed of light would change.

Just one man's opinion.

Answer 4

E= MC^2. Einstein's formula is derived from E = MV^2, V being velocity. That means if you throw a rock twice as hard it has 4 times the energy. But that assumes the rock has mass. Exchanging the variables, V^2 = E / M. If M is zero, however, V becomes infinite (division by zero). Since light has no mass, it has infinite velocity, which is the speed of light in a sense.

Answer 5

There was a young fellow named Bright
Whose speed was was much faster than light
He went out one day
In his usual way
And returned on the previous night.

Answer 6

The light has its own intrinsic features and speed is one of them

Answer 7

i think reason may be photon,which has dual character(wave and partical).it acts as wave in high energy.
but truth is that,up to date,no scientist is able to defined what is light.if you can say and define what exactly a light,then you can get noble prize.

Answer 8

well u got the mass thing right but its not necessarily the fastest speed there are thing that go faster than the speed of light but they never go slower if u go slower than the speed of light than with out manipulating matter u can never go faster

Answer 9

It's this modern world. Everybody's in a hurry.

Answer 10

many obstructions i believe!!