In 1676, by studying the motion of Jupiter’s moon Io, Danish astronomer Ole Rømer calculated that light travels at a finite speed. Two years later, building on data gathered by Rømer, Dutch mathematician and scientist Christiaan Huygens became the first person to attempt to determine the actual speed of light, according to the American Museum of Natural History in New York City.
Huygens came up with a figure of 131,000 miles per second (211,000 kilometers per second), a number that isn’t accurate by today’s standards — we now know that the speed of light in the “vacuum” of empty space is about 186,282 miles per second (299,792 km per second) — but his assessment showcased that light travels at an incredible speed.
According to Albert Einstein’s theory of special relativity, light travels so fast that, in a vacuum, nothing in the universe is capable of moving faster.
“We cannot move through the vacuum of space faster than the speed of light,” confirmed Jason Cassibry, an associate professor of aerospace engineering at the Propulsion Research Center, University of Alabama in Huntsville.
Question answered, right? Maybe not. When light is not in a vacuum, does the rule still apply?
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