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omer9 | 1 year ago

Light travels 300.000km/h, not 200.000km/h. Or did I overlooked something?

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halestock|1 year ago

It’s about 200,000km/h when traveling through fiber optic cable.

rayhaanj|1 year ago

I think you meant kilometres per second, not per hour.

crote|1 year ago

Very simplified: the speed of light isn't constant. The well-known 299.792.458 m/s constant is the speed of light in vacuum - and glass isn't a vacuum. Light goes significantly slower in a lot of mediums, including glass, and it's why things like lenses are possible.

somat|1 year ago

It is also why high speed trading firms invest in microwave radio links the speed of light through air is enough faster enough than the speed of light through glass that they feel this gives them a trading edge.

Honestly, gaming the system this hard really worries me, a lot of our economic ability is tied up in these trading system(the stock market). and I can see something going wrong far faster than our ability to fix it.

formerly_proven|1 year ago

Speed of light in a medium is c/index of refraction, which is about 1.5 for every glass and highly transparent plastic.