The Speed of Light is Pretty Speedy

The Speed of Light

Everyone appreciates illustrations of any sort that put very large things into perspective. These illustrations can come in many different forms, but I think that the most effective ones are the ones that use comparisons. These comparison illustrations can take something that is absolutely massive and crunch it into something almost manageable. This is a valuable tool in the field of astronomy because so many of the topics that are dealt with have ‘astronomical’ size. In class we saw this effectively done when using a calendar to convey time in our Universe. I managed to find an illustration of the speed of light compared to some speeds that we are more aware of. This illustration shows the speeds of commons things like a cheetah and a bullet train. Their individual speeds were represented as a portion of a circle. Now the helpfulness of this illustration comes into effect when you notice that these portions of the circle aren’t very big at all. You then realize that the speed of light would go around the circle 18,135 times. Once you have a slight grasp on this information you can take it and apply it to many of the terms of scale that astronomy deals with. Think about the fact that it takes light about eight minutes to reach the Earth from the Sun. Now think about the speed that is represented with the illustration. It really blows your mind.