We all know that the speed of light is particularly fast. However, do we know how slow it seems when travelling through our sparse solar system?
Alphonse Swinehart has created an excellent visualisation to portray this, taking us from the surface of the Sun right out to Jupiter, passing by little old Earth and Ceres along the way.
Why stop at Jupiter? Well, he wanted to keep the video below an hour (!) and, to be honest, you get the message pretty clearly despite the lack of Saturn, Uranus, Neptune and Pluto.
“In our terrestrial view of things, the speed of light seems incredibly fast. But as soon as you view it against the vast distances of the universe, it’s unfortunately very slow,” says Swinehart.
The video isn’t 100pc accurate, with Swinehart “taking liberties” with things like planet alignment and asteroids, but it’s a great view of our solar system all the same.
