eli5: In a world of instant communication via satellite, why does news anchors connecting with field reporters live still involve a 3 second silent pause?
In: Physics
Communication via satellite is not instant — many communications satellites fly at an altitude high enough that their orbital speed is equal to the rotation of the earth — in other words a fixed antenna on the ground can point to the same position in the sky, day and night (geostationary orbit). Roughly, this is an altitude of 35,000km. The speed of light is 300,000km/s. To bounce a signal from earth, to the satellite, back to earth is 70,000km, or ~250ms, a quarter of a second.
The three second delay is more a discipline of the broadcaster to wait for that much pause to ensure they don’t speak over each other. You’d be surprised how much difficulty a quarter of a second delay adds to a conversation.
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