speed of light

speed of light

English

Noun

speed of light (plural speeds of light) (abbreviated as c)

1. (physics) The speed of electromagnetic radiation; in a perfect vacuum it is defined as 299,792,458 metres per second
   • 2008, BioWare, Mass Effect, Redwood City: Electronic Arts, →ISBN, OCLC 246633669, PC, scene: FTL Drive: Appearance Codex entry:

     As the subjective speed of light is raised within the field, objects outside will appear to red-shift, eventually becoming visible only to radio telescope antennae.

   • 2011 September 22, Nick Collins, “Speed of light 'broken' by scientists”, in Daily Telegraph‎:

     The science world was left in shock when workers at the world's largest physics lab announced they had recorded subatomic particles travelling faster than the speed of light – a feat that Einstein said was impossible.

2. (colloquial, figurative) A very rapid speed.

Synonyms

• Einstein barrier
• Einstein constant
• lightspeed
• light speed
• c

Translations

the speed of electromagnetic radiation in a perfect vacuum

Albanian: shpejtësia e dritës Arabic: سرعَة الضوء‎ Armenian: լույսի արագություն (luysi aragutʿyun) Azerbaijani: işığın sürəti Basque: argiaren abiadura Catalan: velocitat de la llum f Chinese: Mandarin: 光速 (zh) (guāngsù) Czech: rychlost světla (cs) f Danish: lysets hastighed (da) Dutch: lichtsnelheid (nl) f Esperanto: lumrapideco Extremaduran: velociá de la lus f Finnish: valon nopeus (fi), valonnopeus (fi) French: vitesse de la lumière (fr) Galician: velocidade da luz (gl) f German: Lichtgeschwindigkeit (de) f Greek: ταχύτητα του φωτός f (tachýtita tou fotós) Hebrew: מהירות האור‎ (he) Hungarian: fénysebesség (hu) Icelandic: ljóshraði (is) Italian: velocità della luce f, c (it) Japanese: 光速 (ja) (kōsoku) Korean: 광속 (ko) (gwangsok) Latvian: gaismas ātrums Lithuanian: šviesos greitis Mongolian: гэрлийн хурд (gerliin xurd) Norwegian: Bokmål: lyshastighet m or f, lysets hastighet m or f Nynorsk: lysfart m, ljosfart m Persian: سرعت نور‎ Polish: prędkość światła f Portuguese: velocidade da luz f Romanian: viteza luminii f Russian: ско́рость све́та (ru) f (skórostʹ svéta) Serbo-Croatian: брзина светлости, brzina svetlosti, брзина свјетлости, brzina svjetlosti Slovene: hitrost svetlobe Spanish: velocidad de la luz (es) f Sundanese: ᮜᮏᮥ ᮎᮠᮚ (laju cahaya) Swedish: ljusets hastighet (sv) c Tagalog: bilis ng suga Turkish: ışık hızı (tr) Vietnamese: ttốc độ ánh sáng

See also

• subluminal
• tardyon
• luxon
• tachyon
• faster-than-c
• faster-than-light (FTL)
• superluminal

Further reading

• speed of light on Wikipedia.Wikipedia