Can Light And Sound Travel At The Same Speed?

by | Last updated on January 24, 2024

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So they’re totally different scales. No information can propagate faster than the speed of light. If you have light that’s going through a media, it can travel slower than that. But

the speed of sound and speed of light are totally incomparable

.

Is lightning slower than sound?

Lightning travels at the speed of light, about 186,000 miles per second. This means that you see lightning pretty much when it happens. When lightning strikes, a noise is made which we call thunder.

Thunder travels much slower, at the speed of sound, about 1088 feet per second.

How fast does sound and light travel?

If you want to compare, the speed of sound in air is ~ 343 m/s and the speed of light is 3×10

10

m/s. In other words,

light travels 186 thousand miles in 1 second, while sound takes almost 5 seconds to travel 1 mile

.

What is the fastest thing in the universe?


Light

travels about 186,270 miles (more than seven times the circumference of Earth) in one second. In modern physics, light is regarded as the fastest thing in the universe, and its velocity in empty space as a fundamental constant of nature.

What is quicker than the speed of light?

Albert Einstein’s special theory of relativity famously dictates that

no known object can travel faster than the speed of light in vacuum

, which is 299,792 km/s.

How fast is the speed of dark?


Darkness travels at the speed of light

. More accurately, darkness does not exist by itself as a unique physical entity, but is simply the absence of light. Any time you block out most of the light – for instance, by cupping your hands together – you get darkness.

What if the speed of light was slower?

If you reduce the speed of light, you slow everything, and just like in a moving frame, if everything is slowed, then

you wouldn’t notice it

. So changing the speed of light would have no effect on anything. The energy of a photon of light is equal to Planck’s constant multiplied by the frequency.

Does sound travel faster than a bullet?

The fastest bullets travel more than 2,600 feet per second. That’s equivalent to over 1,800 miles per hour. To put that in perspective, it’s amazing to realize that

bullets travel over twice the speed of sound

!

Which is first thunder or lightning?

If we are watching the sky,

we see the lightning before we hear the thunder

. That is because light travels much faster than sound waves. We can estimate the distance of the lightning by counting how many seconds it takes until we hear the thunder.

Is light faster than thunder?

Lightning and thunder happen at the same time. But you see lightning before you hear thunder because

light, which travels a million times faster than sound

, arrives almost instantly. Sound, on the other hand, takes about five seconds to travel one mile.

What’s the slowest thing in the universe?


Xenon-124

, one of the radioactive noble gases, has an extremely long half-life. The half-life of xenon-124, one isotope of xenon, was recently measured to be a trillion times longer than the age of the universe! This is the slowest process ever measured by direct observation.

Is a black hole faster than light?


To escape from within a black hole requires faster than light speeds

, but according to Einstein’s theory of gravity, General Relativity, gravity is the distortion of space and time caused by the presence of mass.

Where does time move the slowest?

Time moves slower

as you get closer to Earth

, because, as Einstein posited in his theory of general relativity, the gravity of a large mass, like Earth, warps the space and time around it. Scientists first observed this “time dilation” effect on the cosmic scale, such as when a star passes near a black hole.

Is time Travelling possible?

In Summary:

Yes, time travel is indeed a real thing

. But it’s not quite what you’ve probably seen in the movies. Under certain conditions, it is possible to experience time passing at a different rate than 1 second per second.

Is Lightspeed travel possible?

Based on our current understanding of physics and the limits of the natural world,

the answer, sadly, is no

. According to Albert Einstein’s theory of special relativity, summarized by the famous equation E=mc

2

, the speed of light (c) is something like a cosmic speed limit that cannot be surpassed.

Is it possible to travel back in time?


Time travel is possible based on the laws of physics

, according to new calculations from researchers at the University of Queensland. But time-travelers wouldn’t be able to alter the past in a measurable way, they say — the future would stay the same.

Can you outrun your shadow?


Your shadow will detach from your feet, and it will “run away” from you

. In the frame of reference of the shadow, you are running away from it. Unfortunately, it won’t last… the elephant, in the end, is still right. Unless, of course, you jump just as the sun sets: your shadow would disappear before you land again.

Can shadows move faster than light?

The simple answer is

yes; a shadow can move faster than the speed of light

. But this doesn’t break any physical law, because a shadow is not a real object. A shadow is the absence of light.

Are shadows the speed of light?

The speed of light is 186,000 miles per second (299,338 kilometers per second). So

if it takes you less than half a second to move your hand that distance, then that shadow will have “broken” the speed of light

.

What if something hit the Earth at the speed of light?

What happens if you move at the speed of light?

Answer: Firstly, the physical consequence of traveling at the speed of light is that

your mass becomes infinite and you slow down

. According to relativity, the faster you move, the more mass you have. The same works on Earth when you’re driving down the freeway.

What if light speed was infinite?

If the speed of light was infinite in every medium, then

refraction would not occur, so the stars wouldn’t twinkle

… of course, this also means the lenses in your eyes wouldn’t do anything, so you couldn’t see them anyway.

How much faster is light than sound?

The speed of light as it travels through air and space is much faster than that of sound; it travels at 300 million meters per second or

273,400 miles per hour

.

Can a bullet break the sound barrier?

The speed of sound is fast, but bullets move faster. In fact,

bullets can move fast enough to break the sound barrier

.

Do bullets make sonic boom?

Story highlights.

Most bullets make small sonic booms when flying through the air

, which to our ears sound like a loud, distinct “crack!” For the Pentagon’s special forces, that makes it hard to be sneaky about what they’re shooting.

David Evans
Author
David Evans
David is a seasoned automotive enthusiast. He is a graduate of Mechanical Engineering and has a passion for all things related to cars and vehicles. With his extensive knowledge of cars and other vehicles, David is an authority in the industry.