THE SPEED OF LIGHT

[Ya Sam]

http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/history/inourtime/inourtime_20061130.shtml



Scientists and thinkers have been fascinated with the speed of light for 
millennia. Aristotle wrongly contended that the speed of light was infinite, 
but it was the 17th Century before serious attempts were made to measure its 
actual velocity – we now know that it’s 186,000 miles per second.

Then in 1905 Einstein’s Special Theory of Relativity predicted that nothing 
can travel faster than the speed of light. This then has dramatic effects on 
the nature of space and time. It’s been thought the speed of light is a 
constant in Nature, a kind of cosmic speed limit, now the scientists aren’t 
so sure.

Contributors

John Barrow, Professor of Mathematical Sciences and Gresham Professor of 
Astronomy at Cambridge University

Iwan Morus, Senior Lecturer in the History of Science at The University of 
Wales, Aberystwyth

Jocelyn Bell Burnell, Visiting Professor of Astrophysics at Oxford 
University

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