• Question: what is faster light or a car

    Asked by anon-276911 on 21 Jan 2021.
    • Photo: Liam Taylor

      Liam Taylor answered on 21 Jan 2021:

      Definitely light! Light can move at 299,792,458 metres every *second*! The fastest car that’s ever been driven was a measly 341 metres per second – that’s 0.0001% of the speed of light 🙂

    • Photo: Michael Nolan

      Michael Nolan answered on 22 Jan 2021:

      In a vacuum (Outer space for example) nothing can travel faster than light. However, light moves slower through materials such as water, since the light interacts with the atoms in the water. But not slow enough that a car is faster!
      But you can shoot light through special materials that slow it down. For example over 20 years ago (https://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/1999/02/physicists-slow-speed-of-light/) it was shown if you shoot light through a very, very, very, very cold collection of atoms (a Bose-Einstein condensate) then you can get the speed of light down to 38 miles per hour (which is slower than I can cycle!). So it could be possible, but not practical!

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