speed of light

English

Noun

speed of light (plural speeds of light) (abbreviated as c)

1. (physics) The speed of electromagnetic radiation; in a perfect vacuum it is defined as 299,792,458 metres per second
   • 2011 September 22, Nick Collins, “Speed of light 'broken' by scientists”, in Daily Telegraph‎^[1]:

     The science world was left in shock when workers at the world's largest physics lab announced they had recorded subatomic particles travelling faster than the speed of light – a feat that Einstein said was impossible.

2. (colloquial, figurative) A very rapid speed.

Synonyms

• Einstein barrier
• Einstein constant
• lightspeed
• light speed
• c

Translations

the speed of electromagnetic radiation in a perfect vacuum

• Albanian: shpejtësia e dritës
• Arabic: سرعَة الضوء
• Armenian: լույսի արագություն (luysi aragutʻyun)
• Azerbaijani: işığın sürəti
• Basque: argiaren abiadura
• Catalan: velocitat de la llum f
• Chinese:

  Mandarin: 光速 (zh) (guāngsù)

• Czech: rychlost světla (cs) f
• Danish: lysets hastighed (da)
• Esperanto: lumrapideco
• Extremaduran: velociá de la lus f
• Finnish: valon nopeus (fi), valonnopeus (fi)
• French: vitesse de la lumière (fr)
• Galician: velocidade da luz (gl) f
• German: Lichtgeschwindigkeit (de) f
• Greek: ταχύτητα του φωτός f (tachýtita tou fotós)
• Hebrew: מהירות האור (he)
• Hungarian: fénysebesség (hu)
• Icelandic: ljóshraði (is)
• Italian: velocità della luce f, c (it)
• (deprecated template usage) {{trans-mid}}
• Japanese: 光速 (ja) (kōsoku)
• Latvian: gaismas ātrums
• Lithuanian: šviesos greitis
• Mongolian: гэрлийн хурд (gerliin xurd)
• Norwegian:

  Bokmål: lyshastighet m or f, lysets hastighet m or f

  Nynorsk: lysfart m, ljosfart m

• Persian: سرعت نور
• Polish: prędkość światła f
• Portuguese: velocidade da luz f
• Romanian: viteza luminii f
• Russian: ско́рость све́та f (skórostʹ svéta)
• Serbo-Croatian: брзина светлости, brzina svetlosti, брзина свјетлости, brzina svjetlosti
• Slovene: hitrost svetlobe
• Spanish: velocidad de la luz (es) f
• Sundanese: ᮜᮏᮥ ᮎᮠᮚ (laju cahaya)
• Swedish: ljusets hastighet (sv) c
• Tagalog: bilis ng suga
• Turkish: ışık hızı (tr)
• Vietnamese: ttốc độ ánh sáng

See also

• subluminal
• tardyon
• luxon
• tachyon
• faster-than-c
• faster-than-light (FTL)
• superluminal

Further reading

• speed of light on Wikipedia.Wikipedia