Riding Light
Overview
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. This animation illustrates, in realtime, the journey of a photon of light emitted from the surface of the sun and traveling across a portion of the solar system, from a human perspective. Liberties were taken with certain things like the alignment of planets and asteroids, as well as ignoring the laws of relativity concerning what a photon actually "sees" or how time is experienced at the speed of light, but overall the size and distances of all the objects were kept as accurate as possible. It was also decided to end the animation just past Jupiter to keep the running length below an hour.
Release date
01/01/2015
Votes
2
Popularity
0.4
Original Soundtrack
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The Comet
Pluto and Beyond
Cassini's Grand Finale
Searching for Skylab, America's Forgotten Triumph
Tien Shan Dream
Gravitation - Urkraft des Universums
The Mystery of Chaco Canyon
Prehistoric Astronomers
The Once and Future Griffith Observatory
Planets of the Sun
Cielo
Living Worlds
Tma nad zlato
Polarograf
Proměny energie
Ionosphere: Dr. Eliana Nossa
Near Earth Asteroids: Dr. Anne Virkki
Solar Weather: Dr. Alessandra Pacini
The Hunt for Dark Matter
Cosmic Fireballs