Eli5: Why does light travel so fast?
In: 130
I would phrase your question from a slightly different perspective. Not just light, but all things without mass travel the same speed. It’s only historical convention to call that speed the “speed of light”. But it is not some special property of light. It seems to be the norm considering the amount of massless particles. The only deviation from that norm are things with mass.
Mass, or inertia, fundamentally is a resistance to acceleration. Massless things can therefore be thought of as having ‘infinite’ acceleration. Which in our universe translates to going at a constant speed; the speed of light.
So from our perspective as massive beings, it’s natural to assume that light travels fast. But I think the more natural question to ask on a universal scale is why does mass makes us so slow?
Latest Answers