Light
Light propagates at 299,792,458 m/s, often approximated as 300,000 kilometres per second or 186,000 miles per second. The speed of light (or c) is the speed of all massless particles and associated fields in a vacuum, and it is the upper limit on the speed at which energy, matter, and information can travel.
Read more about this topic: Motion (physics)
Famous quotes containing the word light:
“A lover may bestride the gossamers
That idles in the wanton summer air,
And yet not fall; so light is vanity.”
—William Shakespeare (1564–1616)
“Such is the role of poetry. It unveils, in the strict sense of the word. It lays bare, under a light which shakes off torpor, the surprising things which surround us and which our senses record mechanically.”
—Jean Cocteau (1889–1963)
“There is a relation between the hours of our life and the centuries of time. As the air I breathe is drawn from the great repositories of nature, as the light on my book is yielded by a star a hundred millions of miles distant, as the poise of my body depends on the equilibrium of centrifugal and centripetal forces, so the hours should be instructed by the ages and the ages explained by the hours.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)