hey there welcome to life noggin just the other day I was having an intense
debate with triangle Bob on the speed of light I was so ready to drop some
knowledge on him but triangle Bob did what he does best and ran away because
he knows he was wrong he didn't go faster than the speed of light but is
that actually possible what would even happen, but before we get into it we
teamed up with our friends at Firefox who are all about speed to make this
video possible. Firefox is the only major browser backed by a non-profit and the
new Firefox lets you browse the Internet twice as fast as before download and see
the new Firefox today fast for good now to start our exploration just what is
light exactly well it's what's often referred to as electromagnetic radiation
in a certain range of wavelengths typically based off of what we can see
with our eyes but can include other radiation that is out of the range of
what we can see it's made up of particles called photons and travels at
a speed of about 300,000 kilometers per second in a vacuum. To give you an idea
of just how fast that is if someone was moving at the speed of light they could
circumnavigate the equator about seven point five times in just about one
second. If superhero comics taught me anything I'm a little worried the earth
might go back in time and I really hope that's not true because then this video
wouldn't exist. superheroes aside can we go faster than
light? well in a vacuum that doesn't really seem to be the case however in
different mediums like glass and water light travels at slower speeds due to
its slower speed it is possible for some particles to beat light in a race when
it's going through certain mediums. In fact when this happens Cherenkov
radiation can occur. Named after Pavel Cherenkov this type of radiation
can be seen as a bluish white glow in places like the pools of water that
surround nuclear reactors in these instances electrons from the reactors
are moving through the water faster than light is moving through the water
creating what we see as the faint blue glow. It's similar to a sonic boom but
with light instead of sound. Going faster than light in this way is kind of like
having Usain Bolt wear Iron Boots so that you can beat him, but hey a wins a
win. It's also interesting to know that a few years ago researchers in Scotland
were able to slow the speed of light traveling through free space. Like we
said before we already knew that light could be slowed when it moved through
things like water and glass but they found that they could
slow photons moving through free space they did this by applying a mask to an
optical beam that gave photons a spatial structure to reduce their speed. While
the difference they were able to measure was small hopefully this could lead to
some pretty awesome discoveries one day and help us better understand light. But
just for fun, if we could find a way to travel at the speed of light, what are
some things that might happen? Well there would probably be some complications
like running out of fuel rather quickly or having a hard time avoiding space
debris when going at that high of a speed. Also due to time dilation if you
went on a mission in space going at the speed of light when you got back to
earth your loved ones relative to you would have aged more. If you did it for
long enough they could even be dead and that's pretty scary to think about. Let's
move on. If we could travel at the speed of light it would certainly open us up
to some amazing opportunities besides just being able to get to school or work
on time, we'd be better equipped to try and colonize other worlds. Going at the
speed of light we could reach Mars in under 30 minutes. We could also reach
Trappist-1 in the span of one of our lives as it would only be about 39 years
away if you haven't heard of Trappist-1 yet it's a planetary system with the
most earth sized planets found in a habitable zone of a single star finding
a way to get there could be a great leap for Humanity expanding itself to other
worlds. If you could travel at light speed where would you go? Let me know in
the comments section below! Did you know that yours truly is on Instagram and
Twitter? Go follow me for exclusive stuff that you won't find here! My name is
Blocko! This has been life noggin! Don't forget to keep on thinking.