What's so special about light

[ck1]

Why does light travel so fast and why can nothing match it's speed

[mjd]

This was discussed in "In Out Time" this week.

Go to the web site & listen

http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/history/inourtime/ inourtime.shtml

[fo3nix]

Perhaps the main reason is that the particles that light consists of, photons, are massless. It's down to this that they have all these weird properties.

[mibn2cweus]

Light is energy freed from matter (photons), and so it goes.

[adar]

The fastest possible speed, according to the currently known laws of physics. Electromagnetic radiation exists in the form of waves or photons moving at the speed of light.

[Matheous]

I must add: because we think its the fastest thing there is does not rule out something faster we just don't know of.....OR does the laws of physics not allow so??

[Kinetic]

I once passed some beams of light while out on my bmx, they aint that fast.

[meglet]

The speed of light often (c) quoted at 300,000 km per second is only through a vacuum. Light passing through a diamond goes less than half as fast at 130,000 km per second. In fact the slowest recorded is through sodium at -272 degrees C at just over 60 km per hour. So it really depends!

[Bigguy]

Just as Einsteinian physics have supplanted Newtonian physics, we anticipate a day when our understanding may be expanded yet again to describe motion faster than the speed of light by an as yet un-discovered or un-reported set of physical laws.

There is no way to predict if it will happen in our lifetimes. I'm not betting on it.

Bigguy; Rochester, New York, U.S.A.