Please watch the video made by NASA to see how slow the speed of light is

Listening to the speed of light is a sight! But in the infinite Universe (literally), the speed of light is still too slow.

The speed of light is always a very fast concept, but just putting it at a relatively long distance, you will see just how slow light can be. That's exactly what scientists at NASA do to educate the public about the speed of light.

Use the previous numbers: in the vacuum environment of the Universe, the photon moves 299,792 km / s, which is about 1,079 billion km / hour. Speed ​​is too fast, but not so fast when taking into account the distance between the two planets.

To show the speed of light in the Universe, in a way that children also understand, planetary scientist James O'Donoghue is working at Goddard Space Travel Center to take responsibility for making videos.

'I make these videos so I can immediately express the views I want to mention,' O'Donoghue told Business Insider about his visual project. 'When I review the lesson before each test, I often draw complex concepts to really understand the problem, that's what I try to do with these videos.'

Looking at a professional video presentation, you will think that O'Donoghue has been doing this industry for a long time but it is not so: he confessed that he only learned how to make videos, with his debut video posted last year by NASA. .

After his first success, O'Donoghue moved to more complex concepts, and his first few million views proved his ability. The project invites, describing this speed of light to be the way to learn physics in the visual universe, showing how fast (or extremely slow) light can be.

This is the speed at which light travels around the Earth

Earth's diameter is about 12,742km. Assuming the atmosphere does not exist (because the particles have a slight delay in the speed of the photon), every second, a photon can run around the Earth 7.5 times.

This is the speed at which light travels between the Earth and the Moon

Between the Blue Planet and its artificial satellite, the distance is 384,400 km, the speed of light between the two surfaces will be 1,255 seconds.

However, this time will increase over time, as the Moon is farther away from us, at a rate of 'parting' of about 3.8 centimeters per year.

This is the speed at which light travels between Earth and Mars

Imagine that you are playing any game, and each button has a delay of about 3 minutes 2 seconds. That is the problem that planetary scientists still encounter.

The distance between Earth and Mars is 54.6 million km, with its superior speed, photons still take 3 minutes 2 seconds to reach the long distance. Even when scientists control exploration robots or download data from Mars, the highest speed the signal can travel is still the speed of light, so every action must be carefully calculated first. when the signal leaves.

But the video above shows only the speed of light moving between two places when Mars is closest to Earth! On average, the distance between Earth and Mars is 254,276,352 km, the light takes up to 28 minutes and 12 seconds to complete the journey.

Obviously, the longer the distance, the longer the travel time will be, even at the speed of light

Space exploration ships are now far from home like New Horizons, Voyager 1 and 2 will show how slow the speed of light can be. At the Proxima Centauri Star System, with planet Proxima b, the extrasolar planet is like the Earth most and also closest to Earth, only 4.2 light-years away.

That is, with the tremendous speed of photons, it still takes 4.2 years to reach the distant planet. We are developing projects to fly the probe at 20% of the speed of light to conquer long distances.

It is Breakthrough Starshot , the third initiative of the Breakthrough series - a science program that supports the process of finding extraterrestrial life, created by Russian billionaire Yuri Mulner. The program was well-supported by the names in the world science village like Stephen Hawking, Martin Rees or Frank Drake.

Space sail.

First announced in April 2016, Starshot is a program worth more than $ 100 million to develop light sails, a fictional technology that uses powerful lasers to fire at a receiving "sail". light - like the way a sailboat receives wind, energizes it to fly through space. The destination of Breakthrough Starshot project is Alpha Centauri ; It is expected that at a rate of 20% of the speed of light, it will take 20 years to arrive and 4 years to spread the word about the Earth, reporting it has completed its mission.

But this is only a hypothesis. We have not confirmed that Breakthrough Starshot will succeed, not sure the technology behind it works. Until now, we still haven't been able to travel with the speed of light, or part of the speed of light.

But that will not stop human progress! The Space Age has only begun 62 years ago with Sputnik artificial satellite; just two years after that landmark, on September 13, 1959, we set foot on the Moon.

It is impossible to foresee how far the future of astronaut technology will go, we just hope for the best!