Recently had a zoom chat with my cousin in US (I am in India). Still blown away by the fact that millions of bits of video and sound data can travel across half the planet in seconds. How is it possible?
In: Technology
The distance (along the surface) between the US and India is about 13,500 km. Your data will travel close to the speed of light at around 300,000 km/sec. In an idealized sense, this means it will take roughly 50 ms (about a 1/20 of a second) for the data to travel.
Obviously there is some pre- and post- processing of data sent that must be done and the data doesn’t take a direct route, but all these things generally are much smaller factors than the physical travel.
Data travels at the speed of light, minus time for processing and routing. At the speed of light it takes .13 seconds to go all the way around the world (a full circle) and in your example it didn’t have to go that far.
The software is helpful as well, usually only sending video data that has changed. That’s why your body may blur or even stutter if you move about quickly but your background remains in focus. The software will also ignore incoming video/sound data if it thinks it is obsolete. So the experience isn’t always as completely smooth like watching a movie but it’s “good enough” for a conversation.
Not the answer sorry BUT I remember a question to this similar in my high school science class once.
It was something along the line of:
A chap stands in london, within eye sight of Big Ben – it’s new years eve at 11:59. it hits midnight and Big Ben “bongs” away. There is a microphone near big ben [close than the man] which transmits the noise around the world for television. In this example, the sound was being broadcast in Australia.
Because of the way data travels compared to the sound waves themselves, the people watching TV/listening on Radio in Australia would hear the ringing first before the man on the bridge just a few hundred feet away from big ben itself [who is listening to the sound waves echoing through the air].
not sure if that is true/accurate, but the example seemed similar to this question
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