What is light? What is it made out of? And why can’t anything travel faster than light?
In: Physics
Those are some big questions there. The simplest one to answer is probably the third one. It’s not that nothing can travel faster than light, as such. It’s more like there is a universal speed limit, and light happens to be able to travel at that limit. We just refer to it as the speed of light because that’s the most common thing that can reach it.
As for what light is and what it’s made from, it’s discrete packets of energy. It’s made from an electric and a magnetic field which both wobble together, but at right angles to each other. When electric fields fluctuate, they create magnetic fields. And when magnetic fields fluctuate, they create electric fields. And if the conditions are right, these fields can support each other and travel through space. It’s a bit like how the roof of the Wembley stadium is held up by the arch, but the arch would fall over without the tension provided by the roof.
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