Why can't you outrun light?
Speed
Why can't you outrun light?
Imagine you're racing your friend to catch a falling leaf. No matter how fast you run, the leaf always reaches the ground first.
The speed of light in a vacuum is the ultimate limit for how fast anything can move. It's like the leaf falling faster than you can run because it doesn't have to fight against air resistance.
Example
If you sprinted as fast as you could, you'd still never catch up to the leaf as it falls.
Remember this
Light moves faster than anything else in the universe.
Text adapted from Wikipedia, licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0.
Related concepts
Supermassive black hole
How can a star's mass turn into a cosmic vacuum trap?
Stellar black hole
Ever wondered why nothing escapes a black hole's pull?
Edwin Hubble showed galaxies recede with a velocity proportional to their distance
Did you know galaxies are moving away from us?
Direct detection of dark matter
Why can't we see dark matter?
Maxwell's equations
Maxwell unified electricity, magnetism, and light into a single theory with four equations
Earth
Light from the Sun takes 8 minutes and 20 seconds to reach Earth
Swipe through more Discover concepts
Open Pocket Polymath