BBC Science Focus

WHY DOES LIGHT TRAVEL FASTER THAN SOUND?

- RM

According to Einstein's Special Relativity, the speed of light has a unique status: it's a fundamenta­l feature of our Universe, representi­ng the maximum speed at which informatio­n can travel from place to place. As such, nothing can match the 300,000km/s achieved by light travelling through a vacuum – least of all sound, which being waves of compressio­n and expansion in a substance doesn’t even exist in a vacuum. That said, light can be slowed down by being passed through transparen­t materials – by around 33 per cent in the case of glass. Even so, it still zooms through glass around 50,000 times faster than sound waves.

 ??  ??

Newspapers in English

Newspapers from United Kingdom